


Rule Maker, Rule Breaker

by mandoinevarro



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Bondage, Creampie, Cum play?, Edging, F/M, Face-Fucking, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Overstimulation, Praise Kink, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Somnophilia, Vaginal Fingering, almost breeding kink but not quite, blowjob, cunnulingus, non-explicit death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:07:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 49,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24012571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandoinevarro/pseuds/mandoinevarro
Summary: It's been six months since you last saw the Mandalorian. Five since he escaped the siege that he caused, since he left you stranded in Nevarro with nothing but a grudge and your memories with him to warm you at night. You're not angry. He was only a costumer in your store, this is fine. It's completely fine.But then one day he decides to show his beskar face in Nevarro again, and maybe. Maybe it's not fine after all.(NO REFUNDS is the prologue)
Relationships: Din Djarin/Reader, Din Djarin/You, Mando/reader, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Original Female Character(s), The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Reader, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/You
Comments: 58
Kudos: 397





	1. NO REFUNDS

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @mandoinevarro

Finally, the lanky kid behind the counter stops air drumming with two chicken bones gnawed dry and trails his dopey eyes from the gloved fist on the table, up a bracer, and along a flexed arm, until they settle on the Mandalorian helmet staring him down and waiting for an answer. The employee removes the music bandeau from around his ears and settles it down, its noise so loud Mando can hear it from where it lays. The kid scratches the whiskers of facial hair growing patchy on his cheeks and thoughtfully nibbles on one of the bones, trying to figure out what one does when a client shows up.

“Uh, what?”

“I need to speak to the owner,” the Mandalorian repeats slowly.

“Oh, uh.” Mouth gaping like a fish too stupid to know it should fear hooks, the kid calmly turns his attention to the four walls of the hardware store, searching for guidance in the fluorescent signs hanging around the room and dictating the store’s rules like they’re ancient scriptures:

NO CHILDREN  
ALLOWED  
INSIDE

WILL BUY  
STOLEN  
GOODS FOR  
LOWER PRICE

NO IMPS

NO REPUBLIC  
OFFICIALS

NO REFUNDS

NO APPOINTMENT,  
NO MEETING

“You, uh,” the kid continues, lingering on that last stanza and flicking open a dusty agenda that probably hasn’t been touched since the war ended, “you got an appointment, uh, sir?” He drags a greasy finger down the planner, squinting at nothing and pretending to read the page that Mando can clearly _see_ is empty.

The bounty hunter sighs, holding on to the last reserves of patience that hang precariously on the cliff of his self-restraint, threatening to let go and leave him to his own anger. “No. But she’ll see me.” You better. You _better_ fucking see him. “I was sold equipment here a few days ago, some of it faulty. I need to speak to her.”

The navigator. The fucking navigator. Of all the bunch of overpriced, black market scraps you’d somehow convinced the Mandalorian to buy from you last time, it just _had_ to be the navigator. He still has his old blasters. Pumps are cheap. Even the deflector shields he could’ve done without for a couple of months. But the _fucking_ navigator. The lack of droids on the Crest means that Mando relies solely on the navigator to set coordinates. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to find his way out of a system, let alone make hyperjumps. Even worse, the model is so old, its glitching isn’t recognized by the control panel, so he had to hover around the atmosphere of this damned planet for three days before figuring out what it was, throwing off his schedule and losing track of two bounties in the process. All because you sold him a damaged version of the _one_ part he can’t do without.

But your gaping-mouthed kid worker seems too unused to visitors to really care about Mando’s request, too entertained nibbling on a bare bone and eyeing the costumer in front of him as a knowing smirk cracks his lips and he says, “I dig it.”

“You…you ‘dig it’? I don’t…”

“The whole, y’know.” He draws circles in the air with the bone, signaling the beskar armor while he wipes the sauce around his mouth with a sleeve. “The, uh, Mondolarian vibe you’ve got going on. Very retro, dude. I dig it.” 

_Mondo…?_ Bewilderment overshadows irritation for a second, and Mando focuses all his energy into searching the kid’s vacant eyes for a sign of intelligent life. “I…I am a Mandalorian.”

 _Fucking stars above_ , it’s never easy with you. If not your endless teasing, it’s the exorbitant prices, your unwillingness to compromise, or your scurrying around so he’s forced to play cat and mouse with you. Your latest impossible challenge for him to tackle is, apparently, getting a straight answer from the obtuse employee you must have handpicked from a catalogue of idiots to torture Mando. Maker, he’s surprised your store hasn’t gone bankrupt yet. He can’t imagine anyone else in the galaxy putting up with your whims. And _he_ only does it because…well, because…

After dedicating a couple of seconds to crafting the perfect response for what appears to be his very first client, the kid muses, “Well, shit, what do I know.” He flashes a toothy smile as he rereads the dogmas on the walls. “Says nothing about Mondolarians here, but, uh—” 

“—Look,” Mando bargains with your gatekeeper, trying to level the exasperation escaping the vocoder, “I only have one faulty part. Let me talk to the owner, and—”

“—Shit. I bet it was the microvalves.” Your staff of one hangs his tuff of hair in shame, swaying it limply from side to side, before staring straight at the visor apologetically. “My bad, dude, I’ve been trying to get them right, but I always fuck them up. It’s hard, y’know? Red with red, white with white. Why not red with white? Or—”

“— _No_. What? No. _Listen_ to me. You sold me a busted—”

“— _I_ sold you?” the kid scoffs, his eyes suddenly snapping wide and offended, ignoring Mando’s clenching fists, which usually make normal people cower. “Excuse me, mister Mondolarian sir, but I don’t, uh, don’t recall selling you _shit_ , in fact—”

“—Not—not _you_ personally, the store, look, just—”

“—in fact, I’ve never even met a Mondolarian before and you’ve, uh, no right— _no right_ — to judge my microvalves that I worked hard on—”

“Let him in.” Your voice carries its usual amusement as it cuts between the Mandalorian and the kid, breaking off the bickering from both ends and drawing their attention to the melody’s source. You lean on the doorframe leading to your workshop, holding a pair of pliers in one hand and a wrench in the other. Grease is smeared on your face, where teeth bite down on a playful smirk and the twinkle in your eyes speaks of terrible intentions—like always. You tilt your head back to the room behind you. “C’mon, Mando. Let my receptionist work.”

With a sigh, the hunter moves towards the separate room, not before glancing back at the _receptionist_ , who throws him one last disapproving look and wraps the bandeau that never stopped blasting music around his ears.

“Why do you keep him here?” the Mandalorian grunts as you push yourself off the doorframe to move inside your studio.

You shrug. “It’s him or droids.” 

Mando trails after you inside the cramped workshop, filled to the brim with piles and piles of sensors and motors and all the other scraps from dubious origins you collect, fix, and resell. He closes the door behind him and pushes a large tube hanging from the roof to the side to walk closer to you.

Facing him, you plummet on your wheeled chair with a sigh, your arms dangling off the armrests, still holding the wrench and the pliers, like you’re the monarch of your little kingdom of junk granting him an audience.

There, Mando finally gets a good look at you, and—much to his annoyance—you’re as lovely as always. Glistening and greasy, your hair falling on your face, you’re still beautiful with oil stains on your skin and fat droplets of sweat trailing your temple. You beam at him from your squeaky throne with that faint grin that attracts nothing but trouble. Maker, no wonder you always manage to talk circles around him. But not this time. This time he won’t fall for your little games. He won’t, he won’t, he won’t. Tonight he’s walking out of here with all of his money, no matter how much you bat your pretty eyelashes at him.

The Mandalorian squares his stance and straightens his back in a futile attempt to intimidate you, strutting ahead firmly and pointing an accusing finger at your face.

“You sold me a—”

“—a busted navigator.” You roll your eyes and push yourself to your legs abruptly before the hunter can get any closer. He stops dead on his tracks. You wave the wrench and the pliers in the air like the conductor of an orchestra. “ _I sold you a busted navigator._ ” The vowels are dragged out with an exaggerated tune to make fun of him. “Yeah, I heard you the first four _thousand times_ , Mando.”

Without looking, you drop the pliers to the side. They land dead center on an open storage box. Perfectly. Almost rehearsed. Something clicks. The Mandalorian suddenly finds the missing piece of a puzzle he didn’t know needed solving, and he feels his shoulders deflate and release some of the anger that drove him to your store in the first place.

You peacock closer to him, one foot in front of the other and swaying your hips as you look down to the wrench in your hand. “But, you should know by now,” you murmur once you find yourself only inches away from the beskar, your voice morphing its earlier mock exasperation into the tone you only use whenever you two aren’t talking business. You look up at him, failing miserably at masking the mischief in your eyes. “I don’t do refunds.” You lift the wrench and grin as it taps the beskar breastplate lightly with a _tink_.

And before you can blink, Mando’s hand flies to your wrist to clutch it roughly, squeezing without hurting you, but with enough strength to force your fist open. Just like he knows you like it. The wrench falls to the floor with a bang that makes you jump. It’s Mando’s turn to smile when he pulls you by the wrist to press you closer against him. The cocky glint in your eyes dulls into confusion.

“I never said it was the navigator,” he informs you lowly.

You tense under his grasp and shift your jaw. “You knew I’d come back,” he continues, encouraged by your grimace, and the modulator effectively hides how much he’s enjoying the way you turn away to hide the blush that creeps to your cheeks. Staring at your feet, you half-heartedly try to wriggle away from his grasp, but he grabs your other wrist instead and holds you flush against the cold beskar. “Okay. I’m back. Now give me my money.”

But his satisfaction is short-lived, because if there’s anyone in the universe who knows no shame, that’s you. So you simply bite your lower lip and move your head from side to side to shake hair and embarrassment off your face. When you look up at the visor again it’s with that brazen insolence that secretly gets the Mandalorian going like nothing else in the galaxy.

“A girl gets lonely in here,” you purr. Your wrists relax, and make no attempt to pull away. “Can you blame me for wanting you back a little earlier?” Your plush lips curl into the perverse smile of someone who’s holding all the cards, making heat rush involuntarily to his crotch. And it drives him fucking insane. He could have you tied, shackled, or bent over, and you would still sneer at him like you had him wrapped around your finger.

At his silence, you wedge a leg tightly between his thighs and massage it against the bulge between. Your gasp in fake surprise when his length hardens at the first hint of a brush, too unused to _any_ sort of physical contact to remain neutral to your bold caresses. He bites down hard on his lip to suppress a moan. He won’t give you the satisfaction.

Mando’s learnt, though, that his restraint only feeds your audacity. Only makes you taunt him more. His lack of response spurs you on, and you crane your neck forward to lick a slow line along the beskar of the chest. You blink at him playfully as you go, stuffing your tongue back into your mouth once you reach the top edge of the breastplate.

You must find it funny. How his ribs expand and contract in anticipation. How he tends to roll and unroll his fists in an attempt to suppress the instinct to throw you on top of the table so crowded by clutter that he can barely see the surface beneath and fuck the smirks off your face. How he always gives in. How he stiffens both scandalized and impossibly aroused every time you introduce him to some newer, filthier act. You must think it’s so _fucking_ funny.

And as much as the bounty hunter wants to shove you back against your crumbling wheeled chair, he knows you’ll only enjoy it more. So he simply lets go of your wrists and steps back.

“I’m only here for my money,” he lies.

The vicious grin grows wider. “ _Oh_ , so you’re making me work for it tonight.” You step back and lean against a table with your arms crossed over your chest, purposefully pushing your tits against the cleavage. Mando shifts in his place. Licking your lips until they glisten, you give him a once-over. You study him inch by inch, and an uncomfortable rope knots in his stomach when he realizes that this is how his bounties must feel when he watches them wordlessly.

Your eyes settle on his visor, and a decision seems to cross them as you walk over to sit on your creaking chair. “Or maybe you just want to hear me beg.” You part your legs wide and clutch the armrest with one hand while the other disappears under the waist of your pants. The contour of your hand shifts up and down slowly inside the crotch of your trousers, and your lips crook into a full O as they release a deep, _foul_ moan. “Is that it?” Your eyes are glossy and malignant, trained on his visor. “You want me to beg for your cock?”

His leather gloves ball into fists, trying to coax blood into his head and away from his…well, his other head.

Yet you hold him in place with that sinful stare and the lewd whimpers that you know get him off, and yes, _fuck yes_ , he wants to hear you beg and sob for him all night as much as he wants to clog your throat with his shaft and make you swallow your teasing.

But he can’t let you win. You can’t scam _five thousand credits_ out of him and expect him to throw himself into your arms no questions asked. He wants to put an end to your little tyrannical rule on his cock. And he wants his fucking money back.

So the powerful Mandalorian watches helplessly as your hand quickens under your clothing and you throw your head back in ecstasy. That fucking smirk doesn’t leave you, though. Even less so when your palm picks up some speed and you hear his breath hitch involuntarily at the visual, loud enough to override the vocoder.

“C-come _on_ , Mando, don’t—” Your hand sinks deeper into your pants and you hum at the adjustment. “Don’t you wanna teach me what—what proper cos-costumer service looks like? Huh?”

His cock jumps in his pants when you say his name in a wanton gasp, and Mando can see you’re sweating and moving your hips faster against your palm. He’s so hard it hurts.

Your smile falters and you frown impatiently as the pent-up tension threatens to snap in your body.

“Don’t cum,” Mando blurts before he can stop himself.

“Or what?”

“Or I won’t give you what you want.”

Your movements halt on command, and the hunter almost envies the control you have over your own body to be able to backtrack on the very edge of your release. You hold your hands up in triumphant surrender as you watch the Mandalorian approach and stop just a breath away from your body. He stands tall before you, crowding you with his size and turning down the volume on the nagging voice that reminds him that _he’s letting you win_.

Eyes on the prize ahead of you, you lick your lips and snake a hand beneath your sit. You pull a lever and the chair plummets a few inches until your mouth is directly in front of the rigid tent growing in his pants. Expert fingers undo his belt and lower his fly, but, _stars_ , nothing is fast enough when Mando already feels the veins of his cock growing thicker and thicker. Skipping all formalities, your hand sneaks inside, cups his balls, and pulls all of him outside. He groans when you grab his shaft and squeeze hard from base to tip, your bare palm catching awkwardly on his equally dry skin. Mando melts into the sensation all the same, but you seem displeased with your palm’s lack of fluidity.

“Fuck. Hold on.” A pair of fingers disappear into your mouth and down your throat as far as they’ll go. You choke on them dramatically and your eyes water slightly, but they shine when the two small intruders drag outside your mouth, pulling a thick string of elastic spit with them and dropping it on his shaft, pulsing with anticipation. You lean forward and look up through your lashes as you unroll your tongue slowly and more gooey saliva dangles from it. It’s too dense to spill onto its target, so you pluck the heavy ropes from your mouth and smear it manually on his cock, while a thread of it hangs on your chin.

“ _Fuck_.” Your tiny clenched fist wakes up every nerve in his body as it drags up and down his shaft, obscene and perfectly lubricated. Mando’s hips buck into its grasp involuntarily, so suddenly that you flinch at the unexpected jolt. It’s a small comfort for him, to see that he can also surprise you. But then you’re giggling again, locking him in place by grabbing the buck of his belt with your free hand.

“Eager,” you remark. You lean forward and place a chaste kiss on the tip that digs into his spine. Maker, it was barely _anything_ , but he’s so hard and your mouth is so close. “Aren’t Mandalorians,” you tease, “supposed to have self-restraint?”

Mando’s only answer is a low groan and a gloved hand that tangles on your hair and pushes you forward. You resist, though, instead wrapping a fist around his base and dragging your hot tongue up his underside, stopping just before the tip. A tortured whimper echoes around the helmet, and the Mandalorian is not sure if you could hear it because his muscles pull tighter, drawing his attention to his cock and your mouth and the fact that the latter is not wrapped around him for some reason. As if you could read his mind, you suddenly engulf him whole. Spit gathers on the edge of your lips as you suck on his length, swallowing around the tip and swirling your tongue around his girth.

“ _Fuck_ , you’re so—so fucking g- _good_ at this.” You hum in response, sending vibrations through his shaft that make his knees buckle. He always forgets how good it feels with you. He forgets that you take him perfectly like all your holes were made for him to fuck. That you make his blood run hot with every swing of your tongue and every spasm of your cunt and every insolent remark that escapes your lovely mouth, now busy pleasuring him.

You settle on his head and suck on the bulb, hollowing your cheeks to let him feel the delicious inside of your mouth. Mando grabs handfuls of your hair with both hands, still trying to extinguish little whimpers before they leave his throat. And you can tell. He knows you can tell because determination clouds your eyes as you yank him closer by the belt. You drag your tongue in a circle around the ridge of the head, before dipping into the slit on the tip and _finally_ earning a punched out groan and some beads of precum as a reward. Somehow, you moan and chuckle at the same time, opening your mouth as strings of spit fall to the floor.

“You’re hard, Mando,” you coo, pumping his length while you rub it on the side of your face, “throbbing and so, _so_ hard. You should’ve come to me sooner, baby. You’re _desperate_.” You suck on the head again, and the Mandalorian’s grip on your hair turns to steel, pulling you into him and no longer asking. Moaning, you let him, taking him as far as you can and wrapping a fist where you can’t reach. Your other hand releases his belt and snakes down to your lap, fumbling with the waistband of your pants.

Somewhere in the swamp of sensations drowning his thoughts, an idea flashes in Mando’s head, and he holds on to it before you can suck it out of his tip. One glove lets go of your hair and quickly grans the hand lowering into your heat to resume touching yourself. His cock still in your mouth, you look up at him with furrowed eyebrows and a silent question.

“You can’t c-cum,” he explains, forcing words out of a throat that right now only wants to moan, “un-until you give me my—my refund.”

You groan and roll your eyes, taking your mouth off him with a _pop_. “Fuck no,” you breathe as you pump him faster and harder, almost making Mando lose his resolve. Almost. His hold on your wrist tightens. “It’s store policy.”

“Y-yeah?” You continue sliding your fist along his shaft, as you lean forward and lower your face to start lightly licking his balls. The room spins around Mando, and his grip on your hair pushes you into him until you suck on one ball gently. “Is—is it store p-policy to— _ngh_ —to f-fuck your clients?”

You chuckle against his taint. Your head straightens to set your attention back on his tip, where he’s leaking an almost embarrassing amount of precum. A thumb brushes over his slit, gathering the pearls and bringing them into your mouth to taste him. The way you rub your core slightly against the chair is sneaky enough, but the Mandalorian catches the movements and tugs your hand and hair tighter as a warning. Your shoulders slump. “I’ll give you half,” you offer.

Mando guides your hand lower and curls it around his swollen cock, silently begging for your attention. His hand wraps over yours as he squeezes your fist and drags it along his shaft at a pace of his liking that sets his insides ablaze. “Eighty.” The helmet falls back as he revels in the wet sounds of your hand sliding back and forth his cock and giving him a nice enough memory for when he inevitably goes back to the Crest and is forced to take care of his needs himself.

You let him guide you, cupping his balls with your other hand and swirling your tongue around his darkening tip. Mando’s chest trembles with a long moan at the toe-curling feeling of your warm spit and your clenched fist working so hard for him, until you drop him from your mouth and answer, “Seventy.”

“ _N-no_ , I—”

“—Seventy,” you repeat and twist your hand away from his grasp, leaving his seeping cock throbbing and abandoned, “or _you_ don’t cum.”

 _Fuck_ , he was close. He was so fucking close, before you turned the tables. Like fucking _always_. A part of him cradles his already bruised pride, shaming him for—yet again—not being able to hold it together around you. But his cock tugs harder. More insistently. It pulls every fiber in his body and _screams_ at him to give you whatever the fuck you want.

“Fine.” He nods his head once, before his better sense can convince him otherwise. “Seventy.”

A full, beautiful smile that almost makes Mando forget he’s getting scammed graces your plump lips. You waste no time shoving your hand inside your underwear again and moving your arm frantically as you give him a couple of throaty whines. You open your mouth as wide as it’ll go and blink up at him, inviting him to take you however he so pleases. He tangles his fingers on your hair and shoves you against him as you wrap your lips around his cock and muffle your mewls on it.

The Mandalorian starts fucking your face, getting his money’s worth as he moves you back and forth. Your eyes water and you gag with every shove, but you work earnestly for him, hollowing your cheeks and moving your tongue and pulling just about every trick on your toolbox to make Mando’s eyes roll to the back of his head.

And _stars_ , even through your pants and his helmet, he can still smell your arousal. He hears the wet squelching of your fingers working your pussy fast and if he could only get a look. _One_ look is all he needs to cum, he’s sure, one fucking look at your clenching cunt and he’s _done_.

“F-fuck, l-let me see,” he pants, “let—let me s-see you—see your p-pussy _cum_ , just— _fuck_ —just a mo-moment, _please_ , j-just…”

Tears from all the gagging fall out of your pretty eyes as you open your mouth and stand up, taking your trembling hand outside to fumble with your trousers. Your thumbs are hooked under their waistband and push down slightly before you suddenly stop and stare at the Mandalorian gulping all the oxygen he can get and waiting for you. “Sixty,” you say carefully.

Too intoxicated with you and too focused on the blood beating hard on his cock, Mando couldn’t care less. He doesn’t give a _shit_ about percentages or money or parts or whatever half-forgotten excuse he had to come here tonight. All that matters and all that’s real is whatever he needs to climax, and if it means letting you win, so be it. “S-sixty. Yes. Whatever. Just—just take your fucking pants off.”

One swift movement and your pants and underwear pool around your ankles. Yanking hard on the hem, you manage to pull the right leg off your boot. You don’t bother with the other one, letting it hang on your left leg as you climb back on the chair, spreading your legs and hooking one thigh over the armrest to offer him the best view possible.

Mando’s cock threatens to spill at the sight. You’re fucking _soaked_. Your folds are blushed and slick and swollen with all the blood accumulated on your cunt. Three fingers rub your aching clit and everything around it with messy strokes, as you stare at the bounty hunter with raw lust and moan for him loud and clear, and this. _This_ is worth the fucking navigator.

As soon as his shaft ghost over your face you lean into it and reach for him with your mouth. Mando takes your head between his hands and resumes his previous brutal pace, his eyesight now directed at the way your cunt spasms and seeps more juices with every circle you press against your lips. And, fuck, you’re taking and whimpering him like you’re _hungry_ for his cock. Pushing harder and further and faster despite the gagging, you’re making Mando see blotches cloud his vision and feel how his muscles turn into hot, thick magma. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he can’t hold it in anymore. His balls start pulling up as a warning and you’re sucking harder and mewling around him.

“I—I…I’m gonna—I—”

Mando can’t find enough words to put together for the life of him, but you nod and manage a chocked “ _Mhmm_ ” and bob your head to the pace of your quickening fingers and _stars oh fuck_ —

The wave of his climax hits him hard on his back and makes him curl around you. He braces himself against the top of your chair and the change in position makes his cock slip outside of your mouth, but his vision goes completely black and all he can feel is the rush of pleasure crushing his bones into dust. Maybe your name is falling from his lips, but he can’t be sure. The never-ending spurts of cum falling _somewhere_ hoard most of his attention, and he focuses on that thick and heavy release, so rare for him that he puts his mind into savoring every second.

It’s not until the echoes around his ears dissipate that the Mandalorian hears you’re still whimpering. Hunched over you, he opens his eyes just in time to see you gather some of the seed that he spilled on your neck and bring it down to smear it over your bundle of nerves, rubbing it one, two, three, four times, before you’re sobbing long and loud. Your hole tightens around nothing, your forehead resting on his cuisse, and Mando thinks he could get hard again just from the image.

You both stay like that for a while, curled into each other and panting in turns, until Mando gathers all the energy left in his system to pull himself upright and shove his softening shaft back into his pants. It’s only then that he sees just how much of a mess he made: Cum landed _everywhere_. It hangs thick all over your face, on your neck, on your hair, on your _clothes_. He blushes darkly and he’s about to open his mouth to apologize, but you sense it. Somehow. You wink and brush off his shame with a smile and a wave of your hand, standing up to get dressed. But Mando’s quicker. He kneels in front of you and gently raises your underwear until it hugs your hips, wishing for a fleeting second he could press a kiss on the supple flesh there. You grab his pauldron for balance to sneak your foot into the pantleg that Mando holds open for you.

For once, it’s he who breaks the silence. “I…I _do_ want my sixty percent, you know.”

“Of course.” You smile sweetly at him, reaching back to your work table to grab a clean rag, rubbing it against your face and neck. “I’ll even throw in some free microvalves for good measure.”


	2. WILL BUY STOLEN GOODS FOR LOWER PRICE

Maker, you need to start cheating. That way you wouldn’t be in the middle of a staring contest with your cards, like you can change their colorful drawings and numbers if you only glare hard enough. You’ve never been particularly good at sabacc, but a little luck wouldn’t hurt, especially since this is the _third_ round in a row you lose. Duma deals the last couple of cards across the coal black table and stacks the deck, signaling the start of the game.

Well, you suppose it doesn’t really matter; you doubt your sabacc buddies have better hands. These days, everyone in Nevarro is short on luck. Luck and food and water. Others are less pessimistic: As soon as Greef Karga glances at his hand he leans back on the carcass of a cantina booth and slaps his belly. “Ha!” he bellows, “by the end of this round, you filthy gutter womp rats will have to borrow from your womp rat mothers to pay me.”

“Quit bluffing, Karga. We know you don’t have shit,” Cara mutters. She picks up her cards and pulls a face like she bit on lemon, but still the veteran goes all in, pushes forward a couple of stabilizing coils, an identity beacon you could’ve sold at a decent price some months ago and—maker—even a pouch of nova crystal dust. Nobody here is stupid enough to gamble with food, but you’re surprised that even nova has lost its worth and been demoted to casino chip status. “This place smells like shit.”

“Bad bluff, piss-poor trash talk too,” you taunt. “Looks like all that time doing business with Imperials smoothed your brain, Karga.”

“ _Ex_ -Imperials,” he corrects. The ex-Guild leader slides a few more credits to the center of his ex-cantina’s table. “We live in a jolly Republic now, didn’t you hear? You’ve been liberated.”

“Fuck ‘em.” Duma turns her head, spits on the melted floor. “Can’t eat liberation, can I?” She throws a few more worthless credits onto the growing pile of nothing. At least, for now, it’s nothing. Credits and ship parts and every other type of currency haven’t meant anything but props in Nevarro for five months, when the siege began. That whole mess with troopers and Greef and Cara was bound to bring some repercussions—aside from making Karga’s cantina look like a volcano erupted inside. For five months, Imperial forces have surrounded the planet, and for five months, food and resources haven’t been allowed inside. They won’t let up, rumor has it, until they find the culprit: one particular Mandalorian with a valuable asset. They think he’s still hiding somewhere in the planet, but you know better. You watched the Razor Crest’s fly off-orbit and leave everything behind. Everything and everyone.

“This place smells like shit,” Cara repeats.

“Not shit,” replies Duma, “ash.” She picks up a card from the deck with long fingers. “You never did explain how that Mandalorian managed to torch this place.”

Cara’s sabacc face melts. Her fingers tighten and bend her cards as she exchanges a complicit look with Greef. “Never said it was Mando.”

“Who else? I was there in the first shootout. That hunter was fierce.” Duma dons a wolfish smile, because this is how she always wins: She plays with people, not cards. In fact, she abandons her hand face-down on the table and—oh no—gives _you_ a once-over. “You knew him well, didn’t you?” You almost want to show her your garbage hand so she doesn’t bother trying to throw you off your inexistent game.

“Swung by the store a couple of times,” you answer as casually as you can manage and pretend the most interesting book is written on your cards. “But we weren’t exactly chummy, if that’s what you’re asking.” Creeping warmth attacks your face and there’s no stopping it. Shit.

“Funny, could swear I saw him leaving your store more than a couple of times.” You feel Duma’s eyes piercing into your forehead. “Pretty late at night, too.”

“Is that so?” Cara pipes with a lopsided grin.

“I thought you two were…friends,” Duma adds.

“Yeah, well,” you mutter, “you thought wrong.” _Friends don’t leave friends to their luck in the middle of a fucking siege_. It’s the same prickly thought that’s plagued you since you watched the Mandalorian take off triumphantly. It’s a stupid feeling. He was under no obligation to take you with him. You didn’t lie to Duma, you two weren’t friends. You couldn’t even call what you had a fling, even those require some degree of making-love-below-the-stars, quoting-passages-of- _Naboo-Nights_ -to-each-other romance. Flings are shooting stars. No, your… _thing_ , whatever it was, did not belong to the heavens. It was earthy. Human. It was counting credits and arguing about fuel prices or old modulators. It had weight—too much, apparently, to escape gravitational pull and fly away with him on the Crest. It was doomed to planets, both feet planted on the ground. 

Still, you remember times when earthy was _good_. There was never anything airy or celestial in the way he’d take you. The shoved clothes, the harsh grunts, the rough hands, the pleasure, it was all palpable and primitive; earthy was _dirty_. Your furtive encounters had beating heart of their own, and there was always hard evidence left behind in case either of you ever needed a reminder: marks on the skin, ripped clothes, stained bedsheets. The bruises he left always took too long to heal, as if his touch enhanced your mortality, made you more human. Stars, those moments are what you miss the most. Five months is a long time to be neglected of touch— _six_ , actually: five months since the siege, six since he last came to you. Earthy expires.

It’s not like there’s nobody in the planet willing to help you soothe your needs; quite the opposite, actually. Lately, it seems like handjobs are the new Nevarran handshake. Just last week you caught Cara feeling up some pretty market girl in an alley. You saw her, she saw you, you rolled your eyes, she grinned and got back to work. You were almost offended. Everybody’s screwing their time through the siege, while you’re left with nothing but reruns of filthy memories with the Mandalorian. You just know nobody but Mando will do. You replay your moments with him like a sad, mental porno on the nights you spend trying to get yourself off. Trying and failing, like having to put out a fire by spitting on it, because the only person in the galaxy with a hose is too busy playing hero lightyears away.

“Last round. Place your bets,” Karga announces and pushes a few more trinkets forward. Cara follows, and you pat around your pockets for something to lose. It’s all just rusted metal anyways. Only…shit, the last three games drained you. And Duma reads it on your face like you’ve got “BROKE” written all over your forehead.

“All out, huh?” She reaches down the table for her bag and drops a beskar pauldron on the table with a _thud_. A _Mandalorian_ pauldron.

Cara purses her lips and balls a fist, but Greef shoots her a warning look. As if cantina brawls could make this place look worse.

“Still can’t believe you didn’t take anything that day,” Duma continues, shaking her head. “Regret it?”

“I’ll regret it,” you answer and go fish, as if a new card—the _right_ card—could fix a life’s worth of bad luck, “when you learn how to chew beskar.” That earns you a signature “Ha!” from Karga and a cocked eyebrow from Duma. She can arch her eyebrows all she wants, but that much is also true. You don’t regret leaving the Mandalorian covert empty-handed.

You were the first on scene that day. After the smoke cleared, the remaining imps left to lick their wounds, and the Crest flew away, you went to check on Karga’s child, his pride and joy. You were met with a gruesome scene. The cantina, Nevarro’s most sacred landmark, had been reduced to its black skeleton, third-degree burns all over, gone. It sounds dramatic, but the cantina used to be the closest thing to a place of worship on this planet. God Booze was dead.

You kicked around the bar’s guts, until you found a gaping mouth on a wall, leading down, down, down into Nevarro’s entrails. Finding purgatory would’ve surprised you less than what you stumbled upon: an underground tunnel, an abandoned covert, and a sinister, unguarded pile of Mandalorian armor. Stars, it would’ve been so easy. You could’ve hoarded the spoils and stashed them away for better days. That amount of beskar could’ve bought you a one-way ticket out of this dumpster and an early retirement. But when you lifted a helmet, it stared back. It was blue and definitely not his, but Mando was all you could think of while you studied the helmet’s unique curves and creases. You heard his exasperated sighs when you got on his nerves, his moans when you’d touch him. And you just couldn’t do it. You sat back and watched as this skughole’s scavengers crept into the tunnels to pillage. Easy as that, everyone in Nevarro but you and Cara now has a beskar toy or two. Soon enough, this planet will house the wealthiest corpses in the galaxy if the siege is not lifted before reserves run out.

Karga clears his throat. “Well, ladies first. Let’s see those cards.” 

Duma ignores him. “You know,” she tells you, “I’ve more beskar than I know what to do with. I’ll trade you a vembrance for a couple of ration packs.”

“And what am I supposed to do with a Mandalorian vembrance, play dress up?”

“The cards,” Greef urges.

“You’ll be rich.”

You snort. “The rich don’t starve.” 

“Give me a break, we both know you’ve got portions to spare.”

Elbows on the table, you lean forward and closer to Duma. She sniffs weakness like a Corellian hound, and if you falter she’ll sink her fangs. “I’m not interested in your fucking loot.”

“Cause it’s stolen? You never had a problem with that before.” She mimics your move and leans closer. Karga fiddles with a coinage of calamari flan, like you’re both Canto Bight slot machines and he’s trying to decide where to put his money. “What, did you grow morals all of a sudden? Or maybe, you’re too worried of what your Mandalorian _friend_ would think.” You flinch. She smirks. “Oh my, what would the disgraced hunter, code-breaker, cult member say—”

The tiny noise of Karga’s coinage clinking on the table is not enough to distract you from the verbal beating Duma is laying on you. But his voice—like he got the air knocked out of him—is enough to grab your attention when he murmurs, “Ask him yourself.”

Cara, Duma, and you turn to Greef Karga, who stares saucer-eyed at the window. All three of your heads move simultaneously, guided by the line of his eyesight. Outside the window, on the deserted street, stands a trooper barking orders. It’s one of those in all-black armor, the extra trigger-happy ones with a side of god complex because they think the change of color magically makes their aim less shitty. His blaster is drawn (surprise, surprise), and on the receiving end of its barrel…

_Maker’s fucking mercy._

You don’t even see the blaster shot, only smoke snaking out of a hole on the shiny breastplate. The trooper plummets to the ground like his puppeteer cut off his strings: no last steps, no resistance. Now, anyone else would’ve walked away from what’s clearly worm food without a second look, but one does not become the best bounty hunter in the parsec by taking chances. A mountain of unpainted beskar looms over the corpse and kicks the blaster off the imp’s limp hand. The Mandalorian sheathes his own weapon—that blaster you’ve tweaked and polished so many times you know it as the palm of your hand—and scans the perimeter for danger.

You don’t tell your legs to move, but they don’t need the command. You find yourself trailing behind Cara, Duma, and Greef, rushing for the door. Outside, all four of you stumble and stop on your tracks to blink stupidly at the Mandalorian, the way children stare wide-eyed at soldiers on military parades. But this warrior stands grander than any Republic or Imperial officer you’ve ever seen. He’s clad head to toe in silver beskar—except for one armorless thigh that makes his other leg look even bulkier. His old armor, the one you used to shine and buff, is gone. This one you’ve only seen from afar, on that day he crashed the imps’ safehouse, and later when the battle broke out. You _know_ it’s him, but in this new getup it’s easy to doubt. Maybe he’s a stranger. Maybe he won’t recognize you.

The Mandalorian studies each of you one by one, his hand near the blaster in case he spots any enemy faces. The hand twitches when he sees Duma—she doesn’t have the cleanest reputation around here—but she’s shocked and unarmed, so his arm relaxes. To Greef and Cara he gives short nods that they return.

And then you. He actually takes a step back when he spots you, like you pushed him square on the chest. The helmet lingers on you and tilts, shamelessly rakes over every feature like he’s memorizing you. You hold your breath. It reminds you of the day you met, that weight on your chest from knowing you’ve been seen. That’s how you know it really is Mando: Whenever he stares at you, you feel it in your bones.

You realize the moment’s dragged out for too long when Karga clears his throat. The spell breaks.

You and Mando look bashfully away from each other. You squint up at the clouds, your hands stiff on your waist in a forced, generic, _looks like rain!_ pose. He turns to his boss (ex-boss? enemy? You never asked for an update on Mando’s most recent status in the Guild) and mutters a short, “Karga.” To Cara he’s warmer, offers a comradely clasp of hands and a pat on the shoulder. “Good to see you again.”

“You too,” Cara drawls, as she stares suspiciously between you and Mando. You squint harder at the clouds. “Didn’t expect you back during a siege, though.”

“I have to…” he spies a furtive glance at Duma and lowers his voice, “I’ve something to do here.”

Duma rolls her eyes and clasps her bag across her chest. “Don’t worry, Mando. I’ll leave you girls to catch up on the hot goss.” She strides into the cantina (probably to bag the bets, the asshole), and goes back outside.

She points at the window of a crumbling building. “Careful with snitches.”

You glance back to the window. Nothing. Jerk. Duma’s not above a _made you look_ moment, apparently. You turn back to her but she’s already disappearing into an alley.

Cara waits until she’s gone to grab the Mandalorian by the arm. “Mando, where’s the…” she glances at you and hesitates. You fold your arms and raise your eyebrows at the veteran. If she expects you to leave graciously like Duma she’s got another thing coming. You’re actually very, _very_ interested on the Mandalorian’s hot goss. Especially it comes with an explanation as to why he left you stranded here. Even though he doesn’t owe you one. Technically. “Y’know,” she finally says and drops her hand. “The _asset_.”

“On the ship. I need to get back.”

“You, my friend, need to lay low,” Greef says with a raised index. “Every imp in Nevarro will be looking for you. Maker—” he spreads his arms “—they already _are_! And someone must have heard the blaster shot. You have ten minutes or so until an Imperial squadron gets here. The, uh, asset will be fine.”

“The asset,” Cara exclaims, “is a ch—is…is _delicate_. He can’t just leave it on the Crest!”

Mando interrupts their game of taboo. “Cara,” he starts, “you go to the ship and check on…the asset. Please. I landed where I did last time. I…I’ll lay low in the covert.”

“About that,” Greef mumbles. He looks at Cara for support, but she steps back and raises both hands: _You say it_. Greef sighs. “They…they found the tunnels, Mando.”

The helmet crooks slowly to study Karga. “Who’s _they_?” 

“Everyone. Half of Nevarro is living down there, you…you can’t go back.”

Silence.

You imagine all four of you go through the same checklist: Even if Cara didn’t already have a top-secret assignment with whatever _the asset_ is, she doesn’t have a place of her own yet. Every week, she crashes on one of her sweethearts’ couches. On their beds, more likely. There’s no way Karga is letting him near his house, not after what happened at the cantina. That leaves…

“Stay with me,” you blurt before you can really think it through.

≈

The cramped storage room you call a home sits a story above your store. It’s four walls and only the essentials: a bed, an armchair, a table, a stove, and the only detached room is the refresher. It’s enough for you. But the Mandalorian looks like he squeezed into a dollhouse when you usher him inside and close the door behind you. He stands in the middle of the room, all fighter’s bulk and grandiose armor, like he’s afraid he’ll break something if he moves. As if he’s never been here before, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The apartment may be small, but it’s so filled with memories you could turn it into a museum of your dirty escapades with him. _And if you look to your right, you’ll see the armchair where he sat while I went down on him on a stormy night._

“So,” you say and lean against the front door, “business or pleasure?”

He moves to stand to the side of the window opposite the front door and his glove moves the old washed out curtain to the side to peer into the street. The sun is setting, and the last streaks of light paint the beskar with warped yellow-orange streaks that stay as still as an undisturbed pond. So this is how he wants the evening to go: quietly and with a reasonable amount of distance between you. Disappointment knots in your stomach.

“Business.” 

You open your mouth to cut into the silence, but you’re all out of words. Maybe you’ve lost your touch. It used to be so easy to tease him, but now…a heaviness seems to weigh down on his shoulders, some heightened sense of duty. But also determination: He stands taller now, prouder, like he woke up one day and knew exactly what he needed to do and why. Whatever that purpose is, you’re pretty sure it doesn’t involve you. You’re a detour, and not even the fun kind, judging by the space between you. Maker, this man used to _pounce_ on you. Has the siege really battered you up that much?

“Been busy?” The sudden question startles you. He’s never been one to break the ice, that was usually your job. 

“Sure.” Nope, not at all. “Store and all.” You closed the store three months ago. Turns out nobody buys equipment for their ships when they can’t fly past the atmosphere. “Plus, somebody needs to keep Karga distracted from his mourning. You owe him a cantina.”

“He told I did that?”

“Just a guess.” You move a couple of steps forward, like you’re approaching a nervous lothcat. When he doesn’t move away, you sit on the armchair, a little closer to him. “You like that flamethrower too much.”

“That what you four were doing in there?” The helmet moves to the side so he can spy deeper down the street. Always careful. “Assessing my damage?”

“No, just sabacc. Different kind of damage.” He’s making small talk. The Mandalorian, whom you’ve overheard have conversations solely based on grunts and sighs, is chatting with you. He’s not just answering out of politeness, he’s prompting you to go on, to keep running your mouth. That’s something he said once between thrusts, perched over you right on this floor: _Keep running your mouth, see what happens_. The memory warms your neck. Maker, not the point. The point is, before, he always said you had a smart mouth. Sometimes he’d chastise you for it, other times he’d encourage it. And you used to have the suspicion (or, let’s face it: fantasy) that he actually liked it. That somewhere hidden, beyond his pride and honor’s jurisdiction, he enjoyed the teasing and the banter, the challenge of having to deal with you. Better yet: More than once it crossed your mind that he got off on it, too. It’s been a long time, but some of that might remain. Maybe you’ll take his advice: keep running your mouth, see what happens.

You sit straighter, arch your back a bit just in case he’s watching. “You interrupted a round with your little stunt.”

“Yeah?” The helmet doesn’t move, but his hand runs up the curtain, considering. “Sorry. I bet you were winning.”

That makes you smile. It’s a dig at you. Far and wide across Nevarro, your uncanny ability to lose every single game of sabacc you play baffles locals and foragers alike. Yes, you know you suck, but the game amuses you anyways. You like the trash talk, the double-guessing, the bluff-calling. So much so that you forget to actually play. But what’s important is he’s teasing you, and that’s more than charted territory with him, a match you have a shot at winning. Okay. Game on.

“I was, actually.”

He huffs. “Don’t believe you.”

“Then I don’t believe you’re here on business.” Pause for effect. You can almost see a question mark form in a cloud above the helmet. You lean forward and lick your lips, lower your voice. “I think you missed me.”

You’re used to the helmet’s features remaining impassive, so you don’t look for clues on there anymore. Mando’s hands are more telling. You want to believe you actually see his fingers twitch and clutch the curtain a little tighter, that he takes too long to answer. That’s what trying to read him is all about—blind-guessing and wishful thinking.

“Don’t know about that. Six months and two weeks without your cons, I’m almost rich.”

_Down to the week, huh?_ “Okay, if you want to make it about money we’ll bet on it. Twenty credits says you missed me.”

“Last time I was here you weren’t a compulsive gambler. Store’s doing that bad?”

“Last time you were here,” you coo, “there was a lot less talking involved.” You stare into the visor, and pray he can’t see the desperate hope in your eyes.

Your prayers are answered. In a way. Mando ignores you, doesn’t even look at you. You hear your clumsy attempt at seduction buzz around him like a one-winged bee, crash into the unmoving, unmoved Mandalorian, and fall to the floor in a pointed-lined spiral. You’re so embarrassed you want to step on it. Well, that settles it. Six months is apparently enough for a Mandalorian to lose interest.

“And store’s doing fine,” you lie to try and sway the conversation away from that lame innuendo that missed its mark. He really just wants to talk, then. No big deal. It’s fine. “Nobody gambles for money anyways.”

“Then why?”

You shrug. “Why do you hunt?” He’s never told you, but you saw him chase down a bounty once. He was ruthless, sweating adrenaline and with far too much stamina to only be chasing a bag of credits. “For the risk. The thrill.”

He lets your words float for a second. “You get a thrill out of losing?”

You roll your eyes. “I only lose cause everybody knows my bluff.” That is, except you. “You need to know someone to know their bluff. Greef and the others already know my too well. You, on the other hand.” You smile. “If you and I played, I’d get to keep so much of your stuff you’d think I’m half Jawa.”

And, only then, he seems to tense. That stupid throwaway line is what makes his spine grow visibly rigid and his hand drop from the curtain to his belt, where the leather of his glove creaks with how tightly he clutches the buckle. White and blue streetlights that reflect on his armor glide around like it’s water instead of beskar, and they’re your only indication that he’s shifted slightly. Slowly, so slowly you expect his neck to creak like a door, the Mandalorian turns away from the window to look at you. He holds there quietly, and you feel ants running down your back…stars, you’re nervous. For the first time in a while, he makes you genuinely anxious.

“You’re saying I don’t know you?” he rasps under the helmet. No, not really, but if it gets a reaction out of him…

“All I’m saying,” you start, summoning all your strength to keep your voice from faltering, “is you’ve been gone too long.” You try to make it sound a bit playful, but the words come out tasting bitter when you remember the sharp little edge that’s been digging on your side. _He left you here_ , it whispers, _he left you here and didn’t bother looking back_. But a heavy boot suddenly drops forward and you’re forced to stop nursing your grudge to try and predict what Mando’s next move will be.

With every step he takes, you’re instinctively swallowed deeper into your armchair, until he’s looming over you. _Stars above_ , the sheer size of him is enough to block out most of the artificial light coming in, and you’re left to squint in the blue twilight. Maker, you don’t remember him this big, this intimidating. Five months ago you would’ve smirked and opened your legs wide. _C’mon, I don’t bite unless you ask_ , you would’ve teased, but now…now you think maybe you are the one who doesn’t know him anymore.

But some things never change, and having him so near still makes your thighs press together. If anything, this new foreignness, the inherent threat of a bounty hunter in your home that never quite poked the right nerve before now pulls on your most sensitive areas. It propels your heartbeat on a sprint. His arm moves, and—oh, you want him to touch you.

Visor trained on you, Mando points to the floor instead. “You hide your credits here.” To illustrate (or just to rub it in that he knows) his boot presses down on the loose tile and shifts from side to side. The sharp sound it makes irritates you less than knowing he found the fox clever hiding spot you used to pat yourself on the back for. “You don’t keep them in the store because it’s too easy to break into. The security panel downstairs is broken, but the one up here works fine.”

You can almost hear his proud smirk under the helmet. There’s a reserved side to him, sure, but bastard can be arrogant when he wants to. And no, you have no idea how he found the spot, but you’re not about to admit it.

“Congrats, boy scout. You can spot a busted panel and you have flat feet. Want a badge?” Your irritation brings back some of your old snark, but you still flinch when he moves closer and his legs brush against your knees.

“You also keep expensive parts inside the stuffing of this—” he takes a tiny step forward and frames your knees with his legs “—armchair.” Your blood freezes at his words, but it abruptly runs hot as the city’s lava river when you realize how close he stands now. His legs press against the armchair and there’s nowhere to go. You’re cornered.

A leather glove moves close and you hold your breath, before you realize he’s only toying with the tips of your hair. But his fingers dig deeper, tangle on thicker strands and, without warning, give a short but firm tug. It’s a tiny pull, but maker’s mercy, you feel your core _pulse_. And then, before you can regain some lucidity, his fingers dip lower, where the tips trace a slow line down your nape. He draws featherlight circles on that spot between your neck and your shoulder that he knows makes your toes curl, and— _stars_ , it’s just been too long—you whimper.

“Still so sensitive here,” he whispers. 

Once, this shielded man knew his way around your body like it belonged to him. You thought that part of him was lost, that he forgot, that he’d truly been gone too long. Those fears dissipate when his palm curls around the back of your neck to hold your gaze on him, while the thumb of his other hand brushes your lips. You know the drill—you open your mouth and give the orange tip some kitten licks. Mando huffs: _You can do better than that_. Maker, it should be a red flag, how quickly you comply. That urgent need to please him that had never, ever felt so crucial. An O forms in your lips before you can stop them, and his thumb pushes down on your tongue deep and deeper. You should play hard, make him earn it, bite him. But his finger starts to retreat and you panic—no, he can’t change his mind, not now. You seal your lips, trap him inside your mouth and suck. But his grip on the back of your neck grows beskar stiff, and he forcefully removes his finger…only to glide the spit over your lips. Just like that first time.

The visor looms closer to your face, and you catch a ruptured sigh, the pleasured kind that these four walls know so well. If Mando wasn’t holding you down, your chest would balloon with satisfaction and you’d float. His thumb trails down your throat, wetting its path and no doubt feeling the vibration when you chuckle. He cocks his head to the side in a silent question.

“You owe me twenty credits,” you explain, your breath clouding the helmet’s surface. “You did miss me.”

Mando crouches lower, where his helmet brushes your nose, and gropes the tops of your thighs with those wide palms you’ve been dreaming about for weeks.

“Yeah? You like bets?” You’ve never heard his voice so coarse, scratchy like week-long stubble. Did he change the settings of his modulator? Or is it just rash, pent-up need? “Then thirty credits says you’re fucking soaked.” His fingers butterfly higher up your thighs, almost at the apex. Your legs jerk.

“That’s cheating,” you gasp. 

He takes one glove off and settles the covered hand on your hip, while the other disappears between your legs until— _stars_ —he cups your core through your pants. You mewl and he hums when he feels the hot, damp fabric.

“I still win.” He presses the heel of his palm _right_ into your clit and grinds it back and forth. Oh, if you thought you were wet before. The pressure, the friction, _him_ —it all scalds you from head to toe like a fever, but you chase it, greedily push your hips into his palm. His fingers flatten along your slit and grope you tighter. “Gonna pay me? Doesn’t have to be credits.” He pushes viciously into you with that wide, hard palm, preening at the little gasps that escape you. Whimpering, you let your eyes fall shut and focus on something sprouting in your belly. Stars, you’re close—how the fuck are you so close already? It must be all the repressed desire, all that _time_. Fuck, you’re _close_ —

The Mandalorian halts. You’re eyes flash open to see him straighten and step back, take his other glove off to stuff it snug between his belt and his hip, and remain still as a building. Still catching your breath, you study him head to toe, scanning for a sign of what went wrong. He’s clutching his belt, his stance is too smug. This isn’t him fighting temptation, he’s toying with you. Maker help him, you’re going to _kill_ him. Some corner in your brain reasons that it’s kinda fair, as payback for all the times you messed with him. But in the forefront of your mind pulses the climax he just denied you, cast aside and angry.

Before you know what you’re doing, you push yourself off the armchair. “You—”

Mando beats you to it. A hand on your shoulder and a vembrance across your chest, he lunges forward and slams your back against a wall. He hovers over you, tightly pressed against your body. A fleshy, hard bulge covered by his pants throbs against your belly. Of course. You forgot how much he likes it when you look like prey; how much he enjoys the hunt, whether he admits it or not. The hand on your shoulder trails down to cup your breast. You squeeze your eyes shut and let out a shaky exhale.

“You need it bad,” he breathes as his fingers massage your chest. The movement shifts the fabric of your tunic, brushing it against your nipple. You roll your hips to try and stimulate him, to show you’re not the only one worked up. His erection twitches and you smile. 

“You— _mmm_ —you’re projecting.” You grind again to prove your point, but he catches on to what you’re implying and retaliates by shoving his hand inside your cleavage. Stars, you have to punch down the moan surges up your throat when he pinches your nipple.

“You missed this,” Mando hisses, and whether he’s trying to convince you or himself, you don’t know. What you _do_ know is he’s plotting to settle this stupid inkling of a bet in his favor. He wants you to admit you missed him so he doesn’t have to. You know, because it’s exactly what _you_ are trying to do.

You sneak your hand down his torso, aiming for the hem of his pants—but before you can get even with him, he crushes his hips against yours and traps your palm between them. And he’s not done—he wedges his thigh between your legs and rubs it up and down, drags your clit _just_ right. Your mouth gapes in a silent moan as white hot pleasure lights up your spine. You want to get away from it but, maker, his forearm is still stiff against your chest. Even when you grab the vembrance with your free hand it doesn’t budge. You’re trapped between him and the wall.

“Can take care of m-myself just fine,” you croak as a last attempt to hold on to your dignity. “At least when I’m alone I don’t have to fake any orgasms.”

Yeah, it’s a low blow. A dirty fucking lie too, but desperate times call for desperate measures and all. Good news is it gets you a reaction—he immediately stops moving, as if your words punched him off balance. Bad news is you hit a nerve—his breathing becomes harsh like a bull’s, so much so that you expect clouds of smoke to come out from under the helmet. The Mandalorian creeps closer to your face and his forearm digs deeper into your chest. There’s a promise of danger in the dark visor that makes your pulse race, and a primitive instinct blasts emergency sirens. Maker, this won’t end well for you.

Just as you’re about to backtrack and whisper you didn’t mean it, Mando lets go of you—only for a split second, before he grasps your shoulders and turns you around to push your front into the wall. You jerk back on instinct, but he flattens a palm between your shoulder blades and squishes you right back against it.

The helmet rests right next to your ear when Mando growls, “You expect me to believe that?” His hands drop to your hips as he replaces the pressure on your back with his chest. His body weight holds you in place, and he rocks the hard outline of his erection along your ass. “That I don’t make you cum, you little fucking—” You curl your back as much as his body allows so he can stroke himself tighter against you. He groans and kneads your cheeks, moves the flesh in tandem with his thrusts. “I shouldn’t let you tonight, t-teach you a lesson.” 

The mere suggestion feels devastating enough to let a pathetic whine tumble from your lips. Before, you could’ve turned this into a game, held out a little longer just to watch him break first. But you’re too pent up, too desperate, too sick of waiting. Your fingers hook on the hem of your trousers and push them down. Mid-movement, he traps both of your wrists in one hand and keeps them pressed against your lower back, while the other one gets your pants the rest of the way down, underwear too. You barely have enough time to step out of them before his free hand reaches between the apex of your thighs. You’re sticky, leaking around his fingers, and pushing back against his crotch like you’ll drop dead if he doesn’t fuck you.

“Fucking _wet_ , fuck…” he mutters. His fingers follow the heat and your pussy clenches around nothing. Stars, if he just moved higher, a little higher where you’re hot and soaked and throbbing for him. But he takes his sweet time, molds the inside of your thighs like clay, pulls the flesh, squishes it together, until you’re writhing against him and leaking down your leg. Your vision blurs. “Can—can I…?” He lets his index finish the sentence, teasing at the edges of your outer lips.

Even with the side of your face against the wall, you manage to nod. “Yeah,” you breathe.

Two fingers slide around your folds and you gasp. Mando moves slowly, collecting your arousal and coating his fingers. Your breath catches when the tips finally push into your entrance—only a fraction before they slide back out, so the rest of his palm can cup along your cunt and drag more slick behind it. He’s strategically avoiding your clit, though, and with both arms behind your back and at his mercy, you can’t reach for it yourself. Fuck, you…you only need to hold on a bit more, he’ll get bored of his game soon enough. That’s it, just a little longer. You waited six months, no way he’s making you beg after a few minutes of teasing.

The Mandalorian eventually pulls his fingers away from your thighs and curses under his breath. You hear the familiar rustling of fabric and a divine _zip_ that fills your eyes with tears of relief. Fucking _finally_. You brace yourself and relax your pelvic floor in preparation, but it’s barely necessary—you’re so ready for it. Your cunt is open and weeping, he can just slide it in. All this time, with nothing substantial inside you, your lower muscles pump and twist painfully with demanding want. Even with his size and in this position, you’re so turned on he might even be able to bottom out. Fuck, he doesn’t have to move much, a few good pumps and he’ll have you cumming, easy. _Stars_ , what’s taking so damn long—

A modulated, battered moan and a wet noise make you turn your head over your shoulder and look for the source. The low light makes it difficult to make out shapes, but there’s no mistaking what you find below you. Hand wrapped solid around his cock, Mando is jerking himself off. With _your_ cum as lubricant. While he treats you like a piece of furniture he’s only gripping for support. A chemical cocktail of lust mixed with fury spikes your blood.

“Is…wh-what are…what the _fuck_ do you think y-you’re…”

“Say it,” he spits between his teeth, “say you f-fucking need me.”

No, no fucking way. As much as the words burn on your tongue and your clit tugs and begs, you’re not saying it. _He_ left, no you. _You_ waited for him. You turn your head as far back as your neck allows without snapping a ligament and look straight into the visor. And pointedly curl your lips inside your mouth, sealed.

Your act of rebellion lasts a good ten seconds.

“You’re so fucking difficult,” he snarls. He stops tugging on his cock, and for a moment you hope he might indulge you, push into you and stop the masochist torment you’ve talked yourselves into. But when it comes to Mando and you, it’s never that easy. Still not releasing your wrists, he grabs the base of his cock, glistening with your stolen juices, and rubs it up and down the swell of your uncovered ass. You gasp, let your lips part and your gaze fall to where he’s rubbing up against you and refusing to push inside. 

He's not going to last long. Swollen and a strangled purple, the head of his cock dribbles warm precum and smears it on your lower back. The veins on his length throb against your ass, and _stars_ , they’d feel so much better inside you. The Mandalorian’s grunts and groans ring more frustrated than lost in pleasure; it’s not enough for him either. He’s torturing you _and_ himself just to prove a point, while you refuse to speak the magic words just to keep your pride. Desperate tears threaten to spill, but you shut your eyes to push them back. Either of you could put an end to it, right now. Maker, it’s on the tip of your tongue: _I need you_. Spit it out, end it. _I need you, Mando, I need you, do whatever you want with me. It doesn’t matter that you abandoned me in this shithole, that you discarded me like faulty equipment, that you didn’t even have the decency to tell me—_

The thrusting stops. When you open your eyes, you find the visor fixed on you, cocked slightly to the side, like there’s writing on your face. Mando’s grip on your wrist softens, his frustrated panting slows. Maybe he sees the unshed tears, or maybe your face really is that transparent, because he takes pity on you. Gentle palms on your shoulders, he turns you around to face him.

Night has fallen. Fragments of fluorescent light pour inside through your worn out curtains and give the helmet a fuzzy silver halo. The rest of the armor is shiny black, smudges of light here and there. His head moves around the features of your face, one by one, taking its time. Showdown’s over. He’s not playing a game anymore, not trying to get you to break, he’s just…studying you. Staring his fill of you farewell-style, even though he just came back. It hits you that you don’t know how long he’s staying this time. You open your mouth to ask, but stop yourself in time. If he leaves, he leaves. He doesn’t owe you any explanations.

But when he curls an arm around your waist and holds you against the wall and his cold breastplate, it doesn’t feel like goodbye. It feels like old times—pre-siege, pre-battle, pre-everything—when he confidently grabs your left thigh, sinks his fingers into the plump flesh, and hooks it on his lower back. You drape your arms around his shoulders and hold him closer. You’ve always liked the bulk of him against you, it makes everything feel more real. Buried on the crook of your neck, you hear him sigh when he lets go of your thigh and blindly searches your cunt. With your leg around his back you’re completely open for him, so it takes him no time to find your bud. He presses against it and rubs it in slow but tight circles that make your legs cramp.

You push down on him, demanding more. He groans and complies, inserts one finger and continues rubbing on your clit with his thumb. Maker, this has no right to be so good. He’s doing pretty much the same you’ve done to yourself these past months, but with Mando there are never any ghost sensations, no _what if_ s. It’s all here and now, and you swear you feel the pleasure of his fingers picking up speed in every corner of your body. He has you moaning and rocking your hips, dripping down his hand, and when he starts rubbing you harder and tighter, you finally whine a tiny, “Please.”

The Mandalorian doesn’t need to ask what you want, but he moves his helmet to look at you square in the face, check if you mean it. You stare droopy-eyed into the visor and nod: _yesyesyesyes_. Mando groans and grips you tighter. Maker, he’s right, you need it—need the bruises, need his cock, need all of him.

“Fuck,” he breathes. His hand leaves you to grab his cock and guide it to your entrance. He moves it around your lips and brushes his tip against your clit as he looks for your hole in the dark. It doesn’t take long for the head to poke right outside where it needs to go. “Fuck, I don’t—don’t think I can hold back, don’t want to hurt you—”

“Stars, _please_ ,” you whine, “I want it rough.” You want it more than rough. After six months, you want it fucking depraved, but neither of you is going to last long enough to make it elaborate. Maker, you don’t care. Right now, you don’t care for risky positions or clever techniques, you want _him_.

He groans and pushes inside—only the head, still testing, but your walls immediately grip him tightly to hinder any attempts to move away. That’s not what you should’ve been worried about. Fingers tight around your waist, Mando pulls you down as he pushes up. _Stars._ The brutal thrust reaches the end of you and then some more. _Fuckfuckfuck_. The dull _bam_ of your skull hitting the wall is suddenly drowned by a slicker, filthier sound coming from between your legs. His length begins to pull out, your pussy complains the whole way, and you can almost hear the Mandalorian gritting his teeth through the sweet torture of feeling you squeeze around him…and thrust back up—harder. He likes the pace and sticks to it—fast, rough, deep, repeat—while you make sounds like you’re choking on air. Stars, it _has_ been long. Long enough to partially forget his size, his fucking _girth_ , currently filling you to the brim and punching high little sounds from your throat.

“ _Mmmando_ ,” you sob.

Mando groans in response, snakes a hand down to your clit and rubs with the same wild abandon as his pounding. Maker, your memory was never this fucking good. No matter how many details you recalled, there’s nothing compared to the real, human meat of his cock pulsing urgently inside you, hitting your cervix, making you whine. Nothing like his fingers around your waist, or knowing there’ll be bruises tomorrow. The pleasure has teeth, carries a painful bite, but it’s exactly what you need. That tangible grit in his thrusts and his fingers is the missing piece. Your muscles start cramping, you pull him tighter against you—Maker, right there, you can feel it. It reaches your head and makes you dizzy, sheds light on some hidden, shameful words.

“Mando, I…”

“I—fuck—I n-needed this,” he grunts and brings his hand down to feel where his cock is inching out of you, like he has to double check it’s actually happening. _Thrust._ “Used—used to d-dream about you.” _Thrust._ Three fingers now push into your clit and draw frantic shapes. You clench your jaw, feel the hot tide in your belly rise faster. _Thrust_. “Wake up so f-fucking hard—cum in my pants.” _Thrust—thrust—thrust._

Maybe it’s his words, maybe the rough pace, but something holds a flame to the dynamite building inside you and it explodes. Maker, your head’s going to burst. You moan long and deep into the spot Mando’s ear might be. Your legs shake, your arms cramp. Months’ worth of frustration gush hot and wet around him, as he babbles encouragement: _There you go, just like that, make it fucking good_. Your walls are still fluttering, your ears are still ringing, you haven’t even ridden out the last of your climax when his hips pick up the pace.

“Let me—let me cum inside,” the warrior pants, “let me f-fill this cunt…I—I haven’t since—fuck, I didn’t—”

“ _Yes_ ,” you gasp, “yes, _please_ , Mando, cum, cum inside—”

There’s no space left between you, but Mando finds a way to squish you tighter against him as he pounds into you for a few last moments, until you hear a strangled grunt, and a half-forgotten warmth pools inside you. The extra lubrication drives his last thrust as deep as your body allows. A few more lazy thrusts inside you, short and stunted as you take his load inside you, before he stops. A warm string trails down your leg, and—stars, he’s leaking out. How much did he cum that it didn’t fit inside you? Fuck.

You take turns panting, whimpering, listening to each other’s heartbeats slow to a semi-normal pace. The Mandalorian moves away from the crook of your neck to meet your glossy eyes. He doesn’t say anything, but you think will. You can almost hear his mouth opening, words boiling and rising in bubbles up his throat—

_Zium!_

It’s your imagination. It’s your ears ringing from that orgasm, your mind making stuff up. But. You could swear you saw a red flash glade right past your cheek. And from the way Mando’s helmet cocks to the side, you know he saw it too. You turn your heads in unison, to see smoke coming out of a hole a breath away from your ear. It takes both of you too long to put two and two together, and—before he can pull out—more of those red flashes are raining down on you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: @mandoinevarro


	3. NO REPUBLIC OFFICIALS

Every man, at some point, has to come to terms with the fact that he will never be his father. For some that means despair; for others, relief. For Din Djarin, it was only confirmation of a life-long suspicion: He will never be a good man. What little he remembers of his biological parents is tinted by childish idealism or repressed grief, but his father was a good man. He was an honest, hardworking family man, that much he remembers. Which means that Din will never be one. Ever since he hit the ground on that discovery he spends every day shoveling into that dark pit, digging out more evidence to back it up: A good man would not have run with Ran’s crew. A good man would not have gotten tangled with Xi’an. A good man would have stayed with Omera, learnt how to work the land and built something instead of destroying, for once. A good man would not have given up the kid. He can never undo that, delivering him to the Empire. It doesn’t matter that he went back, he can never take back the couple of hours between the delivery and the return, when he became a man who’d exchange a child’s life for credits. And maker, he wants to. He would like nothing more than to erase every stain on that self-flagellating list, but every day he adds more items instead. The latest addition: A good man would not have put you in danger.

You’re upset but pretending not to be, which makes apologizing even more difficult. You hid it well during the night, while panic and darkness still veiled your face, but now blue dawn light is beginning to leer over the horizon, threatening to reveal you to the Mandalorian. So you mostly walk in silence a few steps ahead of him, kicking volcanic pebbles, and every once in a while you grace him with a forced joke ( _Scatter booths and a few drunks around here, and it’ll look just like the cantina_ ) as a verbal pat on the back to let him know you two are in good terms. But your voice is plateau-flat and you don’t smile. Maker, you really can’t bluff for shit.

Mando would prefer screaming. He’d rather you lash out at him, a few good shoves, a _get away from me_ that he definitely deserves, some inkling of emotion and he’d be able to apologize sincerely. Instead you braved the pilgrimage through the Nevarran wasteland, reproached nothing, complained less, so right now, what could he possibly tell you? No, really, what can he say? _I’m sorry that your house is fucking wrecked, that you had to dress in a hurry and run from your own home, that I made you walk all night across lava flats, that your store will be staked out by imps so you can’t go back, that you’ve joined the “Wanted Dead or Alive” club for being associated with me._ He could say that plus another million things, and all of it—while very true and very awful—wouldn’t cut it. What he really wants to get off his chest, the apology that threatens to smash his teeth and trebuchet out the helmet is: _I’m sorry I didn’t take you with me_. But he can’t say it, because how do you offer an apology to someone who doesn’t want it? It’s just…you don’t seem to need it. You act like him leaving you here was normal, like before these six months apart he hadn’t made it a habit of making up any half-assed excuse to visit you every time he was back in Nevarro. Like those months didn’t happen, like there’s nothing to talk about. Like you barely noticed his absence.

Below the helmet, Din wrinkles his nose at the three-act tragedy he’s weaving. Fucking stars, he sounds like a moony idiot boy. He forgets, sometimes, that your relationship is business _and_ pleasure, but nothing beyond those lines. Those boundaries were transparisteel-clear to you from the beginning, but sometimes he wobbles on that tight rope, afraid to stay teetering there but terrified to fall outside its limits. He needs to learn from you.

Still…he should apologize. No—not for leaving—but for last night. Imps finding him in your house (He doesn’t know how that happened, but he will. He will.) The violence, the danger, the fleeing. You were barely able to throw a few things into a go-bag, apparently aware that you wouldn’t be back to your home a while. Because of him.

“I’m sorry,” he calls behind you.

You turn to him with furrowed eyebrows. “What?”

“I’m sorry. About yesterday. Your…your house, the store, imps. It was my fault.” He catches up to you and raises his hand to run it down your shoulder. Thankfully, he stops the gesture in time and drops his arm back to his side. “I put you in danger, and it won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”

Your forehead smoothens, and the slight surprise that briefly crossed your eyes vanishes. “Oh. That.”

 _That?_ Did…did you expect something else? Maker, did he do something else to you last night?

You cut off his blind panic with a shrug. “Well,” you sigh, and continue walking, one foot at the base of a smooth, slippery mound of hardened magma. “If we get ambushed again I know you’ll be a perfect gentleman—” Mando climbs the slope first and offers his hand to help you up. He’s about to pull it back when he reminds himself you don’t need the help. But you take it. “—and throw yourself in front of the fire to shield me like last night. How gallant, by the way. Women must love you.” You give him a tiny thank-you smile and strut down the lava planes. “As for the damage, I’ll just add it to your bill.”

“My _bill_?”

“Yes, my belongings were very valuable. Collector’s antiques.” Your smile goes from shy to mischievous in the blink of an eye. “Won’t come in cheap.”

The memory of stuffing poking out of your shitty couch makes him huff. Suddenly he feels less sorry for yesterday. Stars above, the fucking nerve of you. The guts—borderline _arrogance_ —that it must take for someone not bound by The Way to talk back to a Mandalorian. To rip him off. Repeatedly. That’s one thing about you that’s always stirred a strong…emotion in him. Indignation is a word. Excitement is another—more fitting, if he’s completely honest. After so many years of civilians tripping over each other to get out of his way, it’s a sick thrill to know that someone is willing to go toe to toe with him. Someone who won’t cower if things get a little dark.

Mando’s walking by your side now, but his longer strides get him ahead faster. He has to stop and wait for you to catch up. It’s more than the strides. He notices in the way you’re walking that something’s wrong. You’re…limping? No. No, you’re just. Walking funny. Your thighs seem to be glued together, so you place one foot in front of the other, careful not to let your legs separate too much.

“You okay there?”

“What?” You follow the helmet’s line of vision to your legs. “ _Oh_. Yeah, don’t worry about it.” 

However, worry is what the Mandalorian does best. He comes up with and discards several possibilities at once: You didn’t get shot in the crossfire, or you’d have more than wobbly legs to show for it. You didn’t fall while you were fleeing, because he held your arm the whole time. He lands on one that chills him. “Did…did I hurt you last night?”

“ _No_ , maker.” Well aware that he won’t let it go, you sigh and put your hands on your hips. “Yes, I’m a little sore, but you didn’t hurt me. It’s only…I mean, I didn’t exactly get to _change_ last night.” You raise your eyebrows like you’re spelling it out for him. Mando’s lost. 

“Okay. And you…don’t like what you’re wearing?”

“I didn’t get to change my _underwear_. And you, um, came… inside, so. Not very comfortable.”

Oh. Shit _._ Guilt rushes hot to his face and warms his ears. He had you traveling for hours…with his cum dribbling out of you. It should’ve dried out by now, but if you’re walking like your knees are tied together, it means you’re still leaking. Sure, he came hard last night, but he didn’t imagine he filled you so well. Fuck. The heat on his face goes from guilt to lust in seconds. It’s a possessive spur: You felt his seed spill from your pretty cunt and down your thighs all night. Every step reminded you who fucked you, whose cock you gushed hot and wet around yesterday. Stars. This is _not_ what he should be thinking about right now. Back to guilt.

“We’re close to the Crest,” he offers as a sloppy _there-there_.

And he’s right. You only walk for a couple more minutes before the gunship’s silver spine peeks over the horizon. A few meters closer, the Mandalorian spots a speeder bike loitering next to the ship. His fingers are already ghosting over his blaster when he enhances the visor’s screen and notices it’s empty. Cara. He smiles under the helmet, imagining his rascal of a son throwing his metal ball to the floor and pouting when someone doesn’t fetch it back for His Majesty immediately. And no-bullshit, ex-shock trooper Cara Dune constantly lifting the metal ball, warning _this is the last time she picks it up for him_.

Once outside the ship, Mando goes straight for the control panel and punches in the access code.

“Why not use the vembrance?” you ask behind him.

“Can’t,” he answers as the ramp starts to lower with the sluggishness of a bascule bridge. “It’s been off since I landed. Imps can read the signal.”

“Yeah, but vembrance signals don’t carry your chain code or anything.” The gate _thumps_ quietly against the ground, and you both climb into the ship. “Could be anyone’s.”

“Setting’s in Mando’a. You’re looking for a Mandalorian and get a beacon in his language? Even imps can figure that one out.”

He steps into the hull and drops your go-bag. And maker. He could not have hoped for a better sight to welcome him.

Inside, babysitter Cara is holding the child at arm’s length like he’s radioactive, sternly ordering the giggling infant, “Spit it out _. Now._ Stars, your dad owes me _big_ fucking time—” The grumbling of the gate closing makes Cara’s head snap toward the sound. As soon as she spots Mando, she lets out a whooshing exhale. “Thank the maker, fucking finally.” She shoves the baby into Mando’s arms, where the green demon blinks happily at him, one cheek round like a squirrel’s.

Mando silently extends a gloved palm under his mouth, and the baby spits out his toy ball. “Have fun?”

“Oh yeah, you _bet_ ,” Cara spits as she swings her bag over her shoulder, prepping for a swift escape from the child’s clutches. “I fucking love cleaning kid drool off the floor. Pulling _live_ _frogs_ out of his mouth? Time of my fucking life.”

“Hope you didn’t swear that much around him.”

“It’s a fifty-year-old fucking baby. I think _fuck_ would be an appropriate first word for—” Cara cuts herself off when her eyes trail behind Mando. “Oh. Uh, hi? Didn’t know you were coming.”

He turns around and…oh, maker. You stand behind him, moons for eyes and mouth gaping, staring at the kid like he’s…well. Like he’s an elderly green baby of some unknown species. So, fitting. Mando wants to punch himself. Idiot. _Idiot_. He didn’t think. When you fled your apartment last night, he guided you straight to the Crest without so much as a heads-up that _maybe_ he adopted an alien child while he was away.

Your voice rattles when you find it, “What…what is that?”

“A baby,” Mando answers. _Yeah, no shit._

“ _Whose?_ ”

“Mine.”

Your eyes go back and forth between him and Cara, who’s being helpful and pretending to wipe a smudge off the weapon’s cabinet. And then you…smile? You put your hands on your hips and smile like it’s a joke you’re not in on.

“Yours? You’re cheating on me, Mando?” You keep waiting for the punchline, the _ha-ha, we got you_ (words that Mando’s never, ever said in his life), but when they don’t say anything your smile drops. And you frown.

“He was the bounty for that job with imps. I turned him in, but I…I went back. For him. That’s why the whole clash with hunters and Karga happened, you remember. Also why Imperial troops landed here, why they’re looking for me. He’s a foundling. I’m his clan—I mean, until I find his real family. It’s why I came back.” Cara turns away from the cabinet at that last new insight, moves back into the conversation’s bubble. “Got a transmission from a Republic official a few weeks back. Says he has information on the kid’s species. He…he asked to see me here.” As nervous as he is, Mando feels a burden lift from his shoulders. You know. He finally told you. A couple of necessary lies here and there, sure, but he’s still relieved he told you.

And you keep frowning. Keep staring at the child, back at the visor, back at the child, as if you’re trying to find the resemblance. The kid makes grabby hands at you, this shiny new person that the little egomaniac must think Mando got just for him, and babbles incoherently. Introductions. You step closer, and hesitantly reach out to touch his ear—

_Bang-bang-bang._

Three clean knocks on the Crest’s metal gate. The baby looks at Cara, Cara looks at you, and you look at Mando, all trying get cues from somebody else. OK. It could be the contact he’s expecting. It could be Karga, he knows where the ship is. Or troopers found them again and a squadron outside is waiting to burn him to a crisp.

After a long silence, you shrug. “Imps wouldn’t knock, right?”

Well, no. They probably wouldn’t.

The Mandalorian moves to the cot, lays the child down, and locks the access window. Then he goes back toward the entrance and lets his hand hover over the panel, nodding at Cara, who already has her blaster in hand. Grabbing your arm and pulling you behind him, he tells you with the lowest, sternest voice he can manage so you can’t think to contradict him, “Stay behind me. Something happens, anything goes wrong, you climb straight to the cockpit and fly us out of here. Understand?”

You swallow, nod, and hold on to his arm from behind.

Mando punches in the code.

At the bottom of the lowered gate, a flash speeder hovers idly next to Cara’s bike, as its owner’s polished Sullust leather booths tap against the ramp. The shock trooper sheathes her weapon with a disappointed groan, like she expected some real heat for a change. You step next to her, studying the approaching figure and equally underwhelmed.

The man climbing the ramp is the furthest possible thing from an imp. He couldn’t look more Republic if he had the whole Senate trailing behind him. Tall and slim, graying hair and crow’s feet, his chest is lined with proud Rebel insignias that Mando doesn’t bother attempting to decipher. He knows just by his raised jaw and confident smile that they’re all for valor. Mando can picture him ten years younger as a Rebel poster boy: cleft chin pointed at the stars, hopeful blue eyes, “Join the Resistance” written at his feet. Now he looks battle-weathered and capable, “Serve the Republic” his new slogan.

The officer studies the three of you and settles on Mando. “You’re the Mandalorian?”

You snort. “No, he wears the armor for kicks.”

Cara chuckles. The man frowns. Mando sighs. Maker help him.

“I am,” Mando says. “Please come inside.” Damage control. He has to be polite. If this man knows half as much as he claimed over the transmission, Mando will need him to cooperate; an opportunity like this won’t come around again. The man needs to feel at ease. Unthreatened. Stars, he should have locked you and Cara in the cockpit.

Out the corner of the visor, he can see you both sizing up the stranger. Cara is not exactly fond of her ex-brothers-in-arms. After the fighting ended, war heroes became politicians, and unremarkable soldiers took up administrative jobs. _Snobs_ , she calls the first, and _holo-pushers,_ the latter. And you…maker. Nevarro is a land of outlaws, where both Empire and Republic are seen as intruders. And you’re as Nevarran as they come. For all Mando knows about your life (admittedly, not that much), you’ve always lived here. You’ve never mentioned any travels—you talk about Nevarran weather, Nevarran people, Nevarran food. If you pricked your finger lava would probably bleed out. This place toughens a person. Nobody without a protective mechanism should ever set foot here. You have your wit. Cara has her combat skills. This man only has New Republic insignias that are more likely to earn him a stabbing than a standing ovation around here.

The officer points at Cara’s tattoos. “Pilot?”

“Dropper.” The veteran folds her arms and squints at him. “Didn’t you serve?”

“I…yes. I did. But I was more, ah, in the _logistics_ side of—”

“So you didn’t actually fight.”

The man’s cheeks turn neon pink and his lips flatten into a line. “One can fight with body or mind. I chose my mind. I can assure you my intellect won as many battles as your bombs, maybe more. And today both my body _and_ mind are dedicated to the glory of the New Republic.”

No doubt those last buzzwords have made councils elsewhere _ohhh_ and _ahhh_. Here, you and Cara exchange a look, the type Mando has noticed women share when a man says something incredibly stupid. The _can-you-believe-this-guy_ look.

“So, you have information about the child’s origin,” Mando goes straight to the point before Cara can reply. The faster this goes—the less time you two have to gang up on him—the better.

The officer’s shoulders relax at the changed subject. “Yes. If it is the way you described it, I might know of its origins. May I see it?”

“No,” Cara bites.

“Do you know the planet? The system?” Mando cuts in.

“The information is classified. I cannot tell you anything without leave from my superiors. Now, I can take the… _child_ with me and deliver it to its species—”

“No. Kid goes with me.”

“Fine.” He doesn’t bother contesting Mando’s terms; he’s a man with plans A through Z. “Then you and the child come with me to Coruscant. We get you authorization to read the archives and you’re on your way.” He offers the confident, trustworthy smile of a man with a foolproof plan. If there’s one thing the Mandalorian doesn’t like it’s foolproof plans. They’re naïve. Nothing has been easy since he picked up the little one in Arvala-7. Every step of the way has been danger and pain and sacrifice. This is too simple. Maybe he’s paranoid. Maybe sometimes things are just easy.

His gut says no.

“Okay, and will the glory of the New Republic help you get past siege lines, Logistics?” you challenge.

The man’s upper lip twitches, a flash of anger in an otherwise serene face. You poked a hole in his plan, after all. Mando smiles bitterly. There it is. Not that easy after all.

“Oh.” For the first time, the man’s confidence wavers. “Well…I, uh. I don’t kno—Mandalorian, how did you get inside in the first place?”

“The Crest is off Imperial grid. But now that they know I’m here, they’ll be watching out for it.”

“How did _you_ get in?” you ask the stranger, but the he rolls his eyes at you like it’s obvious.

“Alright, what if you faked a beacon?” Cara says. “Like…the print the Crest would have if it actually, y’know, had one. You turn it on, make imps chase it, and fly away on the opposite direction.”

“Could that work?” Mando asks you. If someone on this planet knows about illegal ship tampering, well, that’s you. “Could you do it?”

Your fingers entwine and twist. “I mean, in theory yes, but…” You raise your gaze to search for answers in those dark chrome lines. A sad question seems to form in your eyes, but even Mando can’t decipher it. Your lips part and for a second he thinks you’ll actually do it: You’ll voice all those questions he can tell you’re dying to ask. His own mouth opens and he realizes he’d tell you the truth, if you asked—about anything. But you close your lips. The moment passes. You swallow the question and nod. “The jammer at the Crest’s nose scrambles signals. If we reset it maybe it could send out a single, unscrambled beacon. Maybe.”

The officer makes a displeased grunt and stares at his own reflection in his shiny boots. “Fine. You have ten days.” He points a stern finger at you. “ _Ten days._ I’ll come back then, and if it’s not ready, I’m leaving. I’m sorry. Can’t risk staying in this planet any longer.” With that, he turns away, cape snapping with him. Mando wonders if he looks that silly when his own cape cracks behind him. The man is halfway down the ramp when he calls over his shoulder, “Mandalorian. Walk with me.”

Mando follows him down the remaining meters of the ramp. At the bottom, far from Cara’s and your earshots, the man warns him, “Be careful with that woman.” 

Second-hang indignation for his friend climbs up the Mandalorian’s neck fast. “Cara Dune is a veteran. A fighter for your precious Repu—”

His contact waves a hand. “Not _her_. The other one.” He climbs on the flash speeder. “Maker, the people here…they don’t believe in anything. You’re a Mandalorian, you fight for a cause. You and I, we have honor.” A more comfortable sensation that anger warms Mando involuntarily. The fact that this respectable, ethical man recognizes him as one of his own fills Mando’s chest with pride. This _good man_ thinks he’s honorable. It’s stupid. A child’s pride, like that time his father praised him for fixing his mother’s tailor droid. He forgot how good it felt. “But people like her?” the officer continues. “All they care about is money.” He sighs as if the weight of the galaxy rests on his shoulders, starts the speeder, and rushes through the lava plains without another word.

When Mando turns around, he’s met by you and Cara standing in the middle of the ramp with your hands on your hips, like he missed curfew and you’re both about to ask him if he knows what time it is. Mando climbs the ramp half-way.

“Do you trust him?” Cara asks.

Mando hesitates. “He’s Republic.”

“That’s not an answer,” you reply. You sound worried. Strangely, that calms Mando. It means that what the officer said about you isn’t true. Sure, it could also be because you have no clue how to fake a beacon, but he prefers to think that you actually care about his problems. Whatever the reason, you agreed to help, and didn’t even discuss rates or bills. That’s new. He wants to ask why. If it’s a sales strategy so you can charge him whatever you want after it’s done. Or if you simply care enough to help him.

“Shower,” he tells you instead. “We’ll talk after.”

You chew your lip like you’re going to argue, but eventually you nod at Cara and walk into the hull to pick up your go-bag. The fresher door clicks behind you, and Mando hears the _swoosh_ of falling water soon after. He can almost picture you, if he tries hard. Shedding your clothes. Climbing into the shower. Cleaning yourself with his soap, sliding it across the dips and slopes of your body. He could join you. Right now. He could put the kid down for a nap, strip, and join you. After landing he pumped water from the hot springs that bubble next to lava pools, so the water must be scalding hot. Your skin would be damp and burning under his hands. He could grab a handful of wet hair and press you tight against him, feel you glide your tits against his bare chest. Thick water vapor would make it hard to breathe, so you’d need to open your mouth, and let those purring little whimpers that get him painfully hard tumble from your lips. His hands would sink down your back—stars you’d feel so fucking soft—

“I’m not wiping _your_ drool off the floor.” Cara’s voice punches him. He unglues his eyes from the hull to see the shock trooper leaning back, arms folded, half-smirk: her default _gotcha_ stance. Cara’s still here. Right. He can’t actually joint you in the shower. Not to mention a beskar helmet and a hot shower wouldn’t go well together. Right. _Get it together_.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Cara’s smirk gains territory on her cheeks. “I just didn’t know you were taking mommy applications for the kid.”

“It’s not like that,” he snaps. He says it in a single breath, _‘snotlikethat_ , too quickly to be anything but defensive. Stars, he is a _Mandalorian_ , a follower of the Way, a feared bounty hunter. There’s no way the heat on his cheeks is a fucking blush, like some pimply fifteen-year-old.

“Why not?” Cara asks, as she walks down the ramp’s bottom half. “I mean, even _you_ have to admit that she’s not hard on the eyes. At all.” Her feet touch volcanic rock. “I actually made a pass at her when we met.”

Mando’s heart and gaze drop to his feet, a migraine-inducing light of clarity flashes in his head. So that’s why you’ve been acting so…normal. You had someone to warm your bed all this time—his _friend_ of all people. You never spent cold, frustrating nights by yourself like he did. Maker, how many times did he wake up in a cold sweat, haunted by memories of sly lips, soft hands, your wet tongue. Fuck, he’s such an _idiot_ to think—

Cara glances at him and rolls her eyes. “Stars, _relax_. She turned me down.” His head snaps up. She laughs and climbs onto the speeder bike. “Maker, if you didn’t wear that over your head I’d bet you were pouting for a second there. Like the kid when you pull frogs out of his mouth. You’ve got it bad, Mando.”

“It’s not—”

“—like that. Yeah, whatever helps you sleep at night.” She leans her elbows on the bike’s clutches and chews the inside of her cheek, debating whether she should tell him something. _Spit it out, Dune_. “It wasn’t serious, you know, me hitting on her. She’s just attractive, feisty. Figured she’d be game for a lot of stuff. And she turned everybody down, not just me, so I thought she had a weird chastity code or something. But judging by those bruises around her wrists,” she says, pushing her soles on the pedals without pressing down and whisking away just yet, “I was right the first time.”

≈

“Last time,” Din warns the kid for the fourth time, “and you go to bed. Deal?.”

The baby claps his six claws together, his giggles echoing in the empty hull. He babbles some elaborate string of nonsense to say that _yes, he understands, get to it_. Even without vocabulary, the little womprat’s a chatter box. He should start talking soon—he’s heard enough in fifty years. Din just hopes his first word isn’t one of Cara’s. 

The baby pulls on his sleeve and Din stands up with a sigh. “Fine, fine.” He points the whipcord thrower at the child, shoots it down, and lifts the brown-green bundle off the floor. Mando rocks his arm back and forth so the kid can pendulum-swing like they’ve been doing for the past hour. The baby laughs furiously, and Din smiles.

Except for the kid’s cackling, the ship is completely silent. You’re probably asleep. After your shower, you could barely hold your head up—it kept curling into your chest and snapping back up while Mando told you the kid’s story with more detail. You hadn’t slept in more than a day, and it was starting to show. He finally told you to go to the cockpit and sleep on his chair.

“Not very polite to have your guest take the chair,” you slurred with a chuckle, eyes half closed.

“You prefer the cot?”

That got you up the ladder fast enough. 

The kid’s crazed giggles eventually start winding down and getting raspier, like a radio slowly losing signal, until they’re proper snores. The baby turns to dead weight at the end of the whipcord. Din cradles him, lays him down in his silver cocoon, and closes its shield manually. He stands in middle ground, equally close to the ladder and the cot. He shouldn’t disturb you. You must be exhausted and he shouldn’t wake you up.

He takes one decisive step to his cot and stops. But…but you could be cold. Or hungry. You haven’t eaten in hours. He should…he should check if you need anything. It’s only polite. Mando climbs the ladder gingerly, and at the top the cockpit’s door slides open.

The lights are out, but you’re not asleep. Not unless you sleep crouched down with cables in your hands, peering into the console’s entrails and moving them around with the skill of a seasoned surgeon.

“That’s not how you jumpstart a gunship.”

At his voice, you look lazily over your shoulder and give him a toothy grin.

“I’m splicing these wires. You suck at it, you know that? This looks like your kid did it.”

“This going on my bill?”

“On the house. For letting me use all your hot water.” You stand and turn around to face him.

The lights are off, and there’s no silver starlight pouring down on your face. The Nevarran night sky is dull on its best days: Fumes of a thousand active volcanos tend to bunch up under the atmosphere and smother the galaxy’s gleams, but that doesn’t mean it’s dark in the cockpit.

When people think about volcanic planets, Mustafar and its infamous lava oceans, lava pits, lava falls, lava _everythings_ are what usually comes up. In Mando’s opinion, Nevarro is the more treacherous of the two. Everyone knows to stay away from Mustafar. Even from space it looks like an evil red eye, more like a furious star than the ill planet it actually is, spitting towers of magma thousands of kilometers high. To an outsider, Nevarro just looks grey; solid and dead, more asteroid than planet. Many travelers are tricked into thinking it’s safe, because what could possibly be dangerous about a giant graveyard? What they don’t know is that the dark rocky surface hides life that’s learned to adapt to the harshest of environments. To the heat. Lethal, burning heat.

This is one of those nights when the planet doesn’t bother hiding its true nature. Outside the Crest lava veins crack the ground’s outer shell and ooze outside like liquid snakes. It’s a normal nightly phenomenon here, and Mando knows molten rock doesn’t burn hot enough to damage the ship, but it _does_ burn bright enough to partially illuminate the cockpit. Copper embers dance around the left side of your face, creating changing contrasts of shadow and gleams that highlight features he’s never noticed before. Stars, he could stare at you for hours. Although, admittedly, he’s always known that. He knew from the moment he saw you. 

The Mandalorian was back from a job—stars, so long ago—when he spotted you dealing cards in Karga’s booth. It wasn’t every day that someone like you showed up on this planet infested by liars, hunters, killers. People like him. Pretty girl like you—prettier, once he came closer to hand his employer the fobs—could try her luck in the Core, spend her evenings in the Galaxies Opera House instead of some sleazy cantina in the middle of nowhere. While Greef rambled on about rates and pucks, Mando studied you. You’d twist your mouth when you were dealt a bad hand, tap your fingers on the table when you got a better one, but there was so much else to find there. So much else he _wanted_ to discover in your face, like it was a jigsaw puzzle he needed to solve. As someone who’s spent his life shielded from prying eyes, he didn’t understand how you could let anyone who glances your way read you like a holobook. Your face was just so… _alive_.

But now, standing in front of you and staring his fill, a heavy certainty thickens Mando’s blood: You are only his to solve. Cara told him, how you refused others. Clever, pretty you could have captivated just about anyone on this planet, but you decided to wait for him. You spent six months on your own, then yesterday you let him have you on his own terms. Let him set his own rough, fast pace. Fuck, it makes him dizzy. The power trip of knowing that nobody else has touched you since he last did. That your moans, your slick, your _cunt_ , they all belong to him.

“…so, sure, a wire stripper is faster, but if you _twist_ them first—”

The cables you were holding to teach him a tail splice fall to the floor when Mando grabs your shoulders and pulls you to him. You stop midsentence and furrow your eyebrows at him. Not scared, just curious. You open your mouth, but he’s faster.

“Is it true?” His voice feels sticky. “You waited for me?”

“What are you ta—”

“You didn’t…” Stars, his heart is pounding. “Didn’t sleep with anyone while I was away? Cara told me.”

You swallow and drop your eyes to the floor, but he grabs your jaw and lifts it. He can hear the cogwheels in your head churning, trying to get out of it somehow, to lighten the mood. Your voice shakes when you mumble, “Didn’t think Dune had such a big mouth—”

“Is it true?” The Mandalorian’s grip on your jaw tightens. Fuck, he just needs to know. If you say no, that’s fine. He’s a grown man, he can handle it. Things will go back to normal: Business and sex, no emotions. But maker’s mercy, if you say yes. If you really are his…

You put on a brave face, like you’re confessing to a crime. “Yes.”

Stars, even with the beskar weighing him down, Mando feels stronger than he has in years. No, not stronger, just more…solid. His heart almost deafens him with how hard it pounds against his ears. His skin is on fire. The helmet becomes imperceptible, he just feels like…like a man. A living, breathing man. It’s a certainty of his own vitality he’s only experienced when jobs go wrong, after very close calls. Everything is amplified, everything is alive. It’s the opposite of a dream. In a good way.

“Good,” he manages to croak. The Mandalorian’s palms cradle your cheeks and pinch them gently. He moves down your shoulders, and you let him poke and push into the soft skin of your arms, making sure you’re real. “That’s why you were so wet yesterday? You were saving it for me?” You push your chest out a little, and he takes the opportunity to grab your breasts and squeeze.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” you gasp, but your eyes are hooded, and your voice too breathless to mean it. You throw your head back and let him massage your flesh, pull and squish. Fuck, even through the gloves and your tunic you feel warm. Soft. Malleable, like he can bend you and mold you any way he wants. The thought makes his cock twitch. Then it jumps when you grab his wrists and wrestle the gloves off him. Your small hands hold his right one and bring it to your lips, where your tongue curls out to lick his fingers, and spit trails down the side of his palm. Shit. How the fuck do you make your mouth feel like an oven? It burns him when you lick between his knuckles, but he knows for a fact that tongue feels better somewhere else. It’s been too long since you sucked him off. Just as he’s about to ball a fist in your hair and push you to your knees, you pop his fingers out of your mouth and shove them inside your cleavage. 

“ _Stars_ ,” you moan, and you make it sound like a dirty word. The wet pads of his fingers circle once around your taut nipple, but it’s not enough. He doesn’t want anything in his way.

“Didn’t get to see these last night.” He squeezes your tits to clarify. “Strip. Show me.” You whine when he pulls his hand out your neckline, but he slaps your thigh and slumps into the pilot chair. You’re a strong girl, and if these six months prove anything it’s you can take a lot more edging and frustration that he previously thought. And yes— _fine_ —a selfish, ugly part of the Mandalorian just wants to see what you’re willing to do for him. You’re no pushover, and yet you’ve never denied anything he’s asked. You deprived yourself for months to wait for him, what else will you let him do to you? How far can he push?

Granted, anything he wants, you always make him earn. You stand in front of the pilot’s chair with your arms crossed, purposefully trying to get on his nerves because he removed his hand from your shirt. Slowly, you bend down, making a show of how your hands trail down your chest, your belly, your legs…and take your boots off. Failing to hide your amused little smile, you kick shoes and socks to the side and put your hands on your hips

“Won’t ask you again,” he warns. If he didn’t know you better, he’d maybe fall for the blushing-virgin eyes you give him.

“What?” You point at your discarded shoes. “I’m undressing.” Your fingers land on the button of your trousers and he thinks, ingeniously, that you’ll shed your pants. Instead, you draw circles around it, teasing, like you’re mimicking rubbing your clit. Maybe he’s reading into it. He searches your eyes for a clue, and…no. Your lower lip is trapped between your teeth, curling into a smile. You know exactly what you’re doing. It’s so fucking ridiculous, but it actually works. Mando feels his cock swell and harden at the sight of you fake-teasing your fake-clit. Shit, _why_ is your stupid pantomiming getting to him? He fucked the life out of you yesterday, that should’ve scratched the itch. It shouldn’t feel so urgent. You push down on the metal button, and you actually _moan_. Stars. “Maybe be more specific.”

The Mandalorian growls your name, low and dark. Second warning.

The button pops free, your pants pool around your ankles. He specifically asked to see your tits, and you’re specifically denying him just that. He can’t believe it sometimes, how you can be so fucking insolent. After decades of training in the Fighting Corps, discipline and obedience were hammered into him as core values, while _you_ have apparently never heard those words. It makes him want to bring you to heel. Teach you some respect.

“Tell me,” you whisper as you step out the puddle of fabric around your feet and move closer to him. It’s difficult to tell in the low light, but there might be a dark patch on the front of your underwear. “Tell me what you want from me.” You hold on to his pauldrons for balance and sit on his lap, your legs dangling from the sides. Then— _stars_ —you roll your hips against his, and your clothed heat pushes against his growing erection.

“I told you. But you won’t— _fuck_ —” you use his shoulders as leverage to pull yourself higher and grind down on his covered cock, “—won’t listen. Maker, you get on my fucking n-nerves.” His hands don’t listen to a word he says though, because they come down to your hips and encourage your torturously slow pace. Stars, he feels drunk.

“Serves you right for teasing me about…” your hips stutter, “…about what Cara said.” You avert your eyes from the visor, and your pace gets shyer. Embarrassed. Maker, _you_ are embarrassed. There’s something else that’s new. And for what? Because you didn’t fuck anyone while he was gone?

He coaxes you to move faster against him with one hand and grabs your jaw with the other. “It’s not—I wasn’t _teasing_ _you_.” He bucks into you, and you pull harder on the pauldrons so your hips can move tighter into his. The added pressure against the underside of his cock must hit your clit, because you whimper and start moving faster. “I only needed to—to know.”

“Know what?” you breathe, clouding his visor. Pulling on his shoulders, you close the remaining space between you, squish your chest against his breastplate, and _drag_ your cunt so tightly against his erection, he swears he can feel your slick through the fabric. After that, he physically can do nothing to stop it. He just blurts it out.

“ _Fuck_. That you’re fucking _mine_ , you filthy thing. You vicious little—” Mando’s fingers dig into your ass, and he takes control of your movements, makes them faster, rougher. His cock pulses, and he feels a hot rope of precum glide down his length and stick to the fabric covering him. Every thrust against your panties makes him grow painfully stiffer, until he’s actually afraid he’ll bust in his pants. Shit, what if he does? What if he cums like this? He can’t see or feel or smell your cunt, but he can see your hooded eyes, your wet lips, the way the flames outside dance over your cheeks. Panic seizes him when he realizes that might be enough. Realistically, he could cum just from dry humping and watching your blissed-out expression. And that _won’t_ do. His grip on your ass stops your rutting. “Take your fucking clothes off. Do it.” Third warning.

Your hand slips from his shoulder, down his breastplate, and below the hem of his pants, where you— _fuck_ —wrap your palm around the base of his cock. Mando hisses. You squeeze harder. “Make me.”

There’s no fourth warning.

 _Enough_ , is all the Mandalorian thinks when his arms hook under your thighs, and he shoots up from the chair. Eyes wide, arms braced tightly around his shoulders, you squeal like he’ll drop you. Frankly, if the cockpit’s ground were made of anything other than durasteel, he probably would—he’s that pissed. Instead he lays you down (maybe _dumps_ you down, but you’re in no fucking position to complain right now) on the floor. The bullets on his calf holster clink when he kneels over you, each knee framing your hips. You lift yourself on your elbows—and _humph_ when his bare palm on your sternum shoves you back against the ground. You wanted it rough, he’ll give it to you fucking rough.

“You wanted this?” he groans as he presses you down harder against the floor to stop you from squirming. You’re thrashing beneath him, but not trying to get away— the exact opposite. With your upper body restrained, you wrap your legs around his waist and try to push him against you, putting your back into it. Mando can feel your thigh muscles flex against his lower back, coercing him forwards while you huff from the frustration of not being able to make him budge at all. Maker, you’re really something. Five seconds ago you were all smooth and teasing, and now your chest is heaving and there’s a needy tint in your eyes, like you decided out of nowhere you want him right fucking now.

“You always want it the hard way, don’t you? You like it when I lose my fucking patience with you?” His free hand latches on to the underside of your thigh and grips handfuls of you. This is no loving, reverent caress—he’s _groping_ you. His palm grabs and pulls your plump flesh like he’s never touched human flesh before. Shit, you’re hot and soft under his touch, and the bolder his stroking gets, the louder you mewl. It makes him feel depraved. Fuck, the _things_ he wants to do to you. All that perverted, primal shit that he can only imagine trying with you. His own thoughts should scare him, but they make him harder. Your chest swells with air, deflates, and expands again from your hard breathing. A hot rush of dominance takes hold of Mando: He wants it his way and he’ll get it his way. His hands meet at the collar of your tunic, make fists…and hold there. The adrenaline coursing through his blood halts for a second, and he looks down at you for permission.

You’re breathing heavily, but you’re able to hear the silent question perfectly. “You say I’m yours,” you pant, “prove it.”

_Rip!_

The seams part easily under his fists and down to your navel, where he grabs the last bit of undivided fabric and yanks it apart, effectively ruining your tunic. Shrugging it off, you actually have the fucking gall to look shocked, wide eyed and gaping-mouthed with your tits spilling out shamelessly, like this wasn’t exactly what you wanted.

“You did this to yourself,” he reminds you as his palms travel up the soft flesh of your tummy, your waist, your ribs. “Could’ve stripped when I told you, showed me these pretty fucking tits when I told you.” His palms skim higher to your breasts, and…maker. He needs a moment. The weight of the helmet overwhelms him for a second, and his head hangs low. Your nipples are taut from arousal and the ship’s cool air, pressing into his dry palms. His fingers clutch your breasts with a mean grip and dig into their meat. Mando lets out a shaky breath that he didn’t know he was holding. Relief. For a second or two, he feels nothing but pure relief that he can finally touch you properly after so long. He feels lighter, more flexible, like finally finding the ocean after six months of oases. But then you inhale loudly and arch your back off the floor, and blood rushes back to his neglected cock.

Stars, he’s dizzy. The sight of you half-naked and wanting is fucking with his head. Maker, your nipples are hard and…and pretty. How in fucking maker’s name did he go six months without you? He’s beginning to salivate, breathe through his mouth. Your skin must taste so fucking good, like…like salt, maybe. Something warm and poignant, heady, like you. Licking his lips, his mouth lowers closer to your chest. Stars, just a taste. Just a taste…

Your short yelp at the temperature change is what punches him back to reality. Something solid is squishing his nose… Oh. The helmet. Right, he has the helmet on. Maker. It takes him a second to come back to himself, like waking up groggy from a nap. He has the helmet on, that’s why he couldn’t taste you. Fucking…stars. He can’t believe it. He actually forgot. For a blissful second, he forgot the helmet was on.

The Mandalorian pulls himself upright to look at you from a better angle. He can tell you’re curious, but you stay quiet, let him study you. You’re spread out beneath him, almost completely bare, and…he gets it. Of course he wanted to taste you. He can see the way you squirm lightly at the cool stillness, laid out half-naked for him, gorgeous; he can hear how your leftover whimpers turn to small gasps for air, how you’re trying to catch your breath. His hands are still in your tits, where he can feel you get goosebumps. Stars, he can even smell you a bit, that earthy scent you tend to carry that reminds him of rain. But he can’t taste you. He never has. Mando’s never taken the helmet off with you. At first it was a trust issue—people in Nevarro aren’t exactly known for their rigid code of ethics. Now he’s spent enough time around you to know (or hope, perhaps) that you wouldn’t try peeking from under a blindfold or turning lights back on, but still. It doesn’t violate the Creed, but it’s…intimate. That’s uncharted territory with him, and honestly, he’s not sure you even _want_ to share that kind of closeness with him. _One day_ , he tells himself, but even an empty vow like that seems naïve. Most days he doesn’t know if he’ll make it to nightfall alive. All he knows for certain right now is he wants to experience you in all five senses. One day. Just not today.

“It’s okay if you…” you whisper below him after a long pause, “…if you don’t want to—”

“I do,” he assures you quickly. His thumb draws soft circles around your nipple, and his other hand lightly cradles your neck. “I just don’t know where to…begin.” All those lonely nights, all that time pumping himself in the dark and getting off to smokey memories of you, and now that he finally has you like he wanted, he hovers over you with a hard cock and no idea where to even _start_. There’s so much to choose from. Once the memories ran out, he started imagining filthy scenarios with you, each more depraved than the last. He doesn’t think you’ll refuse if he asks, but stars, how’s he supposed to choose _one_ —

“I think most people,” you murmur, clasping your hand around his wrist and dragging it down your torso, “would begin about here.” You guide him below your underwear’s elastic, down your mound…stars.

“Fuck, you’re so— _wet_.” Your slick spilled everywhere around your cunt: down your slit, around your lips. He hasn’t fucked you yet, but you feel like you already came _twice_. You must be as desperate as he is, but you haven’t tried to get yourself off. He didn’t realize that when you tease him, you tease yourself just as much. You’re saving your climax for him. So in your own sly, fucked-up way, you’re actually being a good girl for him. “All for me?” His index dips into your hot slit for lubrication and circles your clit slowly. His other hand pulls your panties down your legs and throws them to the side, before settling on your tummy.

You give him a good, open-mouthed moan. “I d-don’t see anyone else here.”

Wrong answer. His fingers leave you for a second—and his palm comes down hard against your cunt. _Slap!_ You cry out surprised, but the squeal quickly morphs into a guttural sob, and you push your core closer to his hand. He feels your already bloated lips swell.

“Yes or no,” he growls.

“Stars, _yes_. S’ yours.” The circles around your clit grow faster. You give a short, high whimper. “Just please, _please_ fuck me, let—let me cum.”

He hums low in his chest. “I like it when you beg.” _Please_ , a simple word, but it works wonders on him. It’s so rare to see you like this. Usually it’s Mando who’s winded up and desperate to fuck. Sure, right now he’s got an aching hard-on dribbling precum, but you’re the one who’s begging, gasping when he pushes tighter into your bundle of nerves. He’s off you and digging into his pants, about to give you what you both want, when he spots a couple of wires you were working on next to your head. They’re long and thick, wrapped in cloth to prevent short circuits. That old fantasy grabs hold of him, makes his chest collapse into itself. He reaches for two cables and holds them in front of him, like an offering to you.

His voice is hoarse when he asks, “Will…would you let me use this on you? I mean—tie you up?” Cheeks ablaze, he moves his hands closer to you, so you can inspect the wires yourself and make a decision.

You push yourself up to your elbows and run a hand along the soft cloth wrapping around them. It’s probably the shifting shadows, but Mando could swear your pupils darken. “Yeah. Okay.” You lay back down and hold out your joint wrists.

“No. Not like that.” Mando sets the cords aside and grabs your ankles, gently pushing them into you until your knees bend, coaxes them up so your feet are off the floor. Your thighs press against your belly, then he takes your right wrist, holds it against your right calf, and ties a wire around them to hold them together. “Like this.” You go rag-doll limp for him while he repeats the process on your left side. When he’s done, he sneaks two fingers between the knot and your calf, making sure it’s not too tight. “How’s that feel?”

“It’s fine,” you gasp. Your legs let gravity open them, and you lick your lips until they’re shiny, subtly pushing your hips closer to where he kneels. “They teach you this at Mandalorian school?”

“Thought about it in a hunt,” he explains, running his palms up and down the backs of your thighs, letting himself get stiffer, more worked up. He wants to be rock hard once he pushes into you, wants to hear you cry over his cock. “Didn’t have handcuffs on me, had to tie the quarry with rope.” His hands move to the outer lips of your pussy and rub them up and down, coaxing more blood to flow down there. “Thought about you the whole fucking time.”

You choke and close your eyes. Mando’s couldn’t be wider open. He can see all of you in this position. Your wet cunt has no choice but to remain open for him, steadily clenching and pushing out more clear slick. It dribbles down your slit, where Mando scoops it with a finger and pushes the liquid into you, working you open for him. You moan and he swallows hard, drawing a wide circle inside you so your muscles relax and open. It works like a charm—you hum and bloom for him, a lazy smile on your face. Maker, Mando’s jealous. Here you are, looking like he’s giving you a fucking massage, while he's gritting his teeth and popping a vein or three trying not to cum. In a testosterone-fueled whim, his other hand bolts down to your clit, rubbing hard and fast all of a sudden, without bothering to warm you up. You whimper high and loud, open your dazed, lust-drunk eyes. Good. He wants you to get lost in it, feel as intensely as he does whenever he’s with you.

“Wh-what are you—” you gag when another finger works itself into your hole, curls, and strokes that special spot inside you. Your tied hands ball into fists and twitch, unconsciously trying to get out of the knot. His fingers quicken, chase your orgasm for you. If you don’t cum soon, he won’t make it. Lovely gasps tumble from your lips, high and purring, that harmonize with his rough, uneven grunting. Fucking _shit_. All those years of iron-hard training, all that discipline he earned, and he’s struggling to keep himself from blowing his load like some virgin. Like a regular man. This is what you reduce him to: flesh and bones.

“M’gonna… _ngh_ , Mando, I…” Yes, he feels it. You’re vice-tight around his fingers, sucking them in to the point that it’s hard to pump them out. He goes faster and you get louder, open-mouthed and shameless with your whining. Every muscle in your body tenses and shudders—shit, it’s big. He feels it building and it’s _strong_. You clench around him, pant, shake…and he stops. Right on the edge, Mando backtracks, removes both hands, and kneels back on his heels to watch you struggle through the shock of the almost-orgasm.

A hoarse, sad cry that almost makes him feel bad leaves your throat. Eyes closed, you dig your nails into the flesh of your calves, and you rock side by side in the with the shudders that attack you. He holds on to your hips to keep you from tumbling to the side—your eyes snap open at his touch, wet with tears and out for blood.

“ _Fffuck_ was that for?” you croak, your throat as raw as if he’d fucked it. He lets go of your wrists and opens his mouth to explain himself—but, granted, it’s not like you can actually see him, so— “ _Stars_ , m’tied up—d-did what you fucking said—maker if this is some— _ngh_ —weird power play, I _swear_ —”

“I want you to cum around me,” he says all at once, before you can undo the loose knot and swing at him. You blink, barely distracted from your rage, and just when you’re about to go back to your rant, he digs into his pants. Scooping shaft and balls in one hand, he pulls his hard cock out as an olive branch. You lick your lips at the sight, seem to give him the benefit of the doubt, and your body relaxes slightly. You’re still staring daggers at him, but you don’t speak, let him explain himself.

“Gonna let me fuck you like this?” he growls, dipping his fingers into your slit for lubrication, jerking himself off with it. His hips buck at the first touch—his cock sensitive from being ignored for too long—but with resolve to spare, he slowly drags his hand down his length, careful not to touch the head (okay, he doesn’t have _that_ much resolve.) “Let me make you cum with my cock, or are you gonna be smart with me?” He’s closer to your soaked pussy, and before he can really think about it, he slides the tip up your slit and rubs it on your clit. He growls, you whimper, and he jerks back from the sensation. _Shitshishit_ —he’ll never get over it if he cums before you. _Focus_. He lands a second slap on your cunt when you don’t answer.

This time you bypass the yelp altogether and go straight for a moan. “Fuck, yes, _yes_ , how—how many times do I have to say you can d-do what you wan—”

Before he even knows he’s doing it, Mando grabs your ass and lifts it to line up your entrance with his cock. He pushes into you, splitting you open and resisting the unforgiving grip of your cunt with every bone in his body. Halfway in, you’re both panting and sweating, and he has to stop. Fuck. _Fuck_. It’s too good. You feel warm and wet and fucking amazing, and he can’t take it that fast. He needs a fucking breather…But you have other plans. Since you can’t reach for him, signal him to move, you clamp down around him— _hard_. _Stars_. He almost drops you. It makes his knees weak, and he has to grind his teeth and pep-talk himself not to cum yet. _Fuck_.

“Stop it,” he grits, his fingers so harsh on your skin he’s sure those bruises won’t heal in weeks.

“Fuck me,” you return.

Hands full of your ass, he lifts you higher into his lap, pulls back, and drags you into him at the same time he slams forward. You cry out, but he hardly hears it—the ringing in his ears drowns almost everything around him. Fucking stars, _fuck_. Maker, he reached the end of you. That’s your cervix pushed up against the head of his cock— _shit_. Before yesterday, you’d never been able to take him so far. He always ended up halfway in, you milking what inches he gave you, unable to stretch more. And now you’ve done it twice, wet as fucking sin and so open he manages to push back, and slam back in. You moan at the cockpit’s half dome, and Mando swears he can see the stars missing in the sky behind his eyelids.

He pulls back, lifts the lower half of your back completely off the floor—and starts wrecking you. Pumping and pushing and drilling into you, while he pants and feels his entire body fill with warm blood. You whimper your way through it, take his cock good and deep and pulse around him while he throbs inside you and you suck him back in with a vulgar, sucking sound and— _fuck_. _Fucking stars_ , he can’t cum. No. Fuck—no matter how fucking tight you squeeze around him, how your tits bounce when he snatches you back into him, how your face is twisted with pleasure, how your ass is— _maker_ —it’s soft and plump under his fingers— _no_. He wants to feel you first. He wants that cunt to gush and soak him. Then he can cum.

“Fuck. _Cum_ ,” he snarls and lowers your hips at an angle that lets your pretty, swollen clit drag along his length. Your nails rake along your calves, you grind your jaw and whimper from your throat. You still don’t cum. “C’mon, c’mon, p-pretty thing, what— _ngh_ —what do you need?”

“T-talk to— _mmm_ —” your cunt spasms around him and Mando almost lets go. Almost. “—talk to me.”

“You’re f-fucking _mine_ , you hear me?” He’s delirious, isn’t even sure if he’s really speaking or he’s only thinking, but you tighten down around him, and it doesn’t matter. His hands move to your waist for a better grip, and he fucking shoves you into his cock while you mewl. “This pussy belongs here, _around my cock_ , nowhere else, un-understand?”

Tears finally drop to your cheekbones, and when you nod jerkily, they fall down on the cockpit floor. “ _Mhmm_. Stars, _yes_.”

Mando’s thrust are about to stutter when he feels you start locking down on his cock. Fuck—it makes him thrust harder and faster and rougher, ignoring the strain in his arms to focus on the one around his cock. On the soaked, hot walls that clutch him like a fist and egg him on. You’re a fucking mess below him, crying and whimpering and mewling. “I know, I f-feel you. There it is—cum, c-cum for me, come on, stars you get me so fucking hard—”

Every muscle in your body goes rigid. Your wrists push into the wires around them, and your pussy squeezes like you’re trying to kill him. He thinks you will, for a moment. For a few crucial seconds, he thinks his heart will burst from the effort of fucking you through it, helping you ride out the fucking tidal way of an orgasm that leaves you gaping-mouthed but mute. You full-body shudder around him, let out a throaty cry, and pulse mercilessly around his cock. _Pulse—pulse—pulse—pul—_

Mando pulls out. He has to. Maker, no way was he going to make it through that. He lays you back on the floor while you both catch your breath, panting in turns for entirely different reasons. You’re throbbing against the floor, crying out the only name you have for him, and enjoying a cocktail of happy hormones, feeling your body tingle with them. Mando is miserable. Writhing like a snail in salt, he’s curved into himself, his forearm on the floor, cursing as the angry red erection between his legs tugs and pulls nerves all over his spine. Shit, he can’t breathe. He’s suffocating under the fucking helmet, and—

“Cum on me,” he hears an airy voice say. He manages to lift the helmet despite the way every bone in his body struggles to keep holding him together. You’re lifting your neck, your legs still tied and lifted, a spiced-out look on your face. “On my chest. Wherever you want.”

The hunter answers with a heavy grunt. He grabs your ankle and pulls himself back up to his previous kneeling position, between your legs, where he would gladly spend the rest of his days. He only realizes he’s shaking when he fists his cock. Growling, he pumps himself the way he used to before he met you, before he learned to appreciate eroticism—it’s fast and hard and angry, up and down, simple hand-fucking that echoes vulgarly in the cockpit. You gasp like he’s doing it to you. Maker.

“Want me to paint you with it? Huh?” he pants, angling his throbbing cock between your legs and toward your chest. You lick your lips and nod, glassy eyes entranced with every twitch of his cock. “Mark you as m-mine. _Fuck_. You ever cum like—like that for anyone else?”

“No,” you mewl, lips parted and a tiny glimpse of your tongue peeking between them. “No, Mando, I—I waited…”

“I know.” And, stars, if that doesn’t make it even better. Knowing you only want to share this with him. Sinking the fingers of his free hand into your breast, Mando groans and tenses. His nostrils flare. _Maker, so fucking close_. “Ask me. Ask m-me to cum on—on you.”

“Please, _please_ , cum all over me. Stars, let me feel you on my skin, Mando, please—”

“ _Dirty_ , d-dirty little…” Heat swarms his belly. “ _Hmph,_ and all m-m-mine— _all fuck-ing_ —” The warmth on his belly bursts, flooding his system with heat and blood. It’s white-hot and debilitating , but he wills himself to keep his eyes open. Ropes of cum fall white on your torso, your breasts, your neck. A bit on your chin that your tongue greedily licks up into your mouth. Mando throbs and growls through it, doesn’t let go of his cock until it’s drained and too sensitive to touch. He flops down, the helmet resting on your tummy. You hiss at the cold metal but let him rest there.

The ringing in his ears is dissipating to a dull hum when he hears you say, “Untie me, please?”

“Oh.” Mando sits upright, his whole body a pleased, buzzing hive. “Of course. Maker, sorry.” Clumsy fingers jitter around the knots until he manages to undo them and pull the wires off. Your legs and arms slump down on the floor, and you close your eyes with a big satisfied exhale.

One of your hands moves to rest against your chest, and your finger falls on a drop of cum. “Stars,” you mutter, and suck on your finger. “I just showered.”

“Shower again.” Mando drops on his back to lay down by your side, caressing your thigh. “Plenty of water around here.” Both of you stare at the empty night sky, vast and dark and endless. Maker, you two must make a sight for the heavens: you completely naked, Mando with his soft cock out. And yet it doesn’t feel silly. He likes this comfortable silence, this shared moment as you both come down from the pleasures you gave each other. It’s new. Before, post-sex used to be dressing up quickly and settling whatever deal you were arguing about in the first place. He never stayed the night. That’s what he regretted the most during those months he spent without you. Mando doesn’t have any memories of you falling asleep in his arms or waking together. He doesn’t know if you hog blankets or if you snore or if you sleepwalk. Looking up at that blank canvass of a sky, he wonders if there’ll ever be time to know you like that. He wonders if you would ever want to make those sorts of memories with him.

“Mando?” you whisper.

“Yeah?”

Although he can’t see you, the Mandalorian knows you’re chewing your lip, quietly focused on a question, weighing it, figuring out if it’s worth asking. “Nothing. Sorry. Forget I said anything.”


	4. NO CHILDREN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: @mandoinevarro

The Mandalorian and you work on the jammer like his life depends on it. Because it does.

The jammer is crammed between both thrusters, at the bottom of the Crest’s long silver nose, that much you know. The first day, you unscrew the frontal durasteel panels to peer into starship’s greasy, twisted insides. Running on a tight schedule and following a list of tasks he wants to cross out by the end of the day (what a dork), the bounty hunter splits duties and you both get to work. It’s mostly physical stuff: desoldering circuit wires and disassembling components. The work is rough on your hands—when you contortion into that nightmare pilot’s chair to sleep that night, you notice a welt in your palm. But you enjoy manual chores, and they come naturally enough to you.

Days two and three follow the same rhythm. You work side by side in comfortable silence you occasionally break with crumbs of conversation. Every once in a while, Mando asks about contraband or banned ship modifications, and you respond with schoolgirl disposition that makes you cringe. A strange vine curls around your stomach every time that low, modulated baritone is directed at you, every time he prompts you to give your opinion or asks for your help. The vine tightens as you search your brain for an answer, and it releases with a shot of endorphins when he grunts in agreement or thanks you. It makes you uneasy, how good it feels to please him.

When you climb down to the cockpit on the fourth morning, though, wincing every time your shoulders move down a rung from the strain of sleeping on that fucking torture chair, the Mandalorian blocks your exit and commands you take a break. He takes over the workload for the day and only asks you to keep an eye on the kid.

“Just be careful when you feed him,” Mando warns you.

Of course you agree to look after his kid. It’s the least you can do while you’re staying here, not working. You agree, but not without feeling your stomach foam. It’s just…you’re not exactly a kid person. Children are so rare in Nevarro, some locals pinch each other for luck when they see one, like they’re mythological creatures. The few babies you’ve encountered wailed for their mothers as soon as you breathed close to them, so you’re bracing yourself for screams when you carry the green baby out of his silver egg, holding him at arm’s length like Cara. He only blinks sleepily at you, massive inky eyes reflecting your face.

Sitting on the hull’s floor, you wearily feed him heaping spoonfuls of baby food you found in a jar labeled “Kid”, a bead of sweat on your forehead as if you were disassembling a bomb, already expecting the green bundle to swat the spoon off your hand and scream for his dad. But the baby opens his mouth wide and willingly to show you his little bird teeth, wraps his adorable tiny claws around your thumb, and guides the spoon to his mouth.

Huh. That wasn’t so hard.

The gruel of crushed meat slides right in again and again, like you’re playing tea party with him. You’re so busy patting yourself in the back, feeling like a baby-whisperer, that you don’t notice how long (or how much) he’s been eating until you dip the spoon and it scoops up air.

You blink stupidly at the empty jar. Maker. _You_ couldn’t have downed it in one sitting.

Even then, he coos and points a green finger at the exact cargo crate that holds supplies, way too familiarized with the places where the Mandalorian stores goodies. _Ah_. So Mando wasn’t warning you about _under_ eating. The baby burps, swallows, and babbles at the crate some more.

“What? No. You’ll make yourself sick.” Kriff, what if he does? What if Mando comes back and sees you couldn’t even handle watching his baby for a few hours? The green terror, however, clearly takes after his dad—stubborn as a mule. He has the nerve to _sigh_ at you and pull himself upright to waddle towards the treasure crate himself.

The baby manages to climb to the box’s summit before you scoop him away. Three-toed feet kick as the kid fights to worm away from your arms. While you’re struggling to keep him from sliding to the floor, you spot a lidless box behind the little glutton’s target. The kid stops fumbling when you kneel in front of it, both of you instantly attracted by the silver clumps winking at you.

“What’s all this, kiddo?”

The baby and you run your hands through the clutter in the box. Plasma cartridges. No— _empty_ plasma shells for the most part. Old cloaks with so many holes they could be fishing nets. Fingerless gloves, rusted tools. A worn-out red cowl with an intricate pattern on the front, the size of a Jawa, or an ten-year-old human. Mando hoards. Everything in the crate is old and past its life expectancy, frozen in time like the Kijimi snow globe Karga used to keep around at the cantina. You suppose bounty hunters can’t afford to make plans about the distant future, but this… Future and present are absent in the box, in the Razor Crest. The past reigns here, perpetually.

The fourth day is also the first time you get to sleep—the _decent_ kind of sleep—with Mando. He crafts a makeshift bed for you out of a long storage box backed against a wall, a few thick blankets, and one of his old rolled cloaks for a pillow. He stands sheepishly in front of it when you climb down from the cockpit, the hunter’s hands clasped behind his back, then fidgeting by his sides, then smoothing the wrinkles on the top blanket, then behind his back again.

“I know it’s not much,” he apologizes preemptively. “And this isn’t for—I don’t expect… I just noticed your back hurts. From sleeping on the chair.”

Lungs steamy with how thick the air is on the Crest (Mando landed right above a lava deposit, hooray), you pretend you’re cold, even fake a tiny shiver, to get him to lay down with you, share his body heat. But you didn’t really expect the Mandalorian to play along.

Boots and armor discarded, he crawls inside the covers next to you, keeps apologizing every time his arm brushes against the the tunic he lent you as pajamas, and half-dangles on the edge—closer to the floor than you—until you grab his sleeve and tug to signal you don’t mind. He rolls closer to you and, in a way, holds you. It’s not cuddling (you don’t have a _cuddling_ kind of relationship with him), but his arm is draped around your shoulders, your back against the metal wall, his knees shyly brushing yours. Right before a thick slumber takes over your limbs, you scoot a bit closer, telling yourself you’re really just cold even as a bead of sweat runs down your spine.

≈

_Warm_. When you stir awake, an intermittent thread of consciousness notices you’re warm. Your slurred, early morning thoughts swim around the word. _Warm, warm, warm_. And sturdy. Something warm and sturdy and comfortable lazily rises and falls below you. Maker, your bones are butter. You can’t remember the last time you slept so well. A rumble travels through a long tunnel until it reaches your ears—once you’re aware of it, it rushes closer, its source right above your head. Snoring. It’s probably you. You’ve never snored, but who else could be in your house? Stars, you feel good. Did you change your mattress? You can’t remember. Kicking your legs, you stretch like a lothcat—half-stretch, because a solid weight against your middle keeps you in place. _Arms_.

That snaps your eyes open, alright.

A metal ceiling peppered with dents looms above you. The Razor Crest. A switch flicks on, and you remember. You’re aboard the Crest, your home is good as lost, last night you slept next to Mando.

Mando.

Looking down to your belly, you find two thick forearms holding your back against the Mandalorian’s torso. The helmet’s edge brushes the crown of your head, where the deep, chesty snoring is coming from. Tenderness warms your ears: You didn’t know Mando snored. It’s a bit embarrassing, how few details you know about him. And you don’t mean his name or his face—you’re well aware those are off boundaries, at least for you. But what does it say about you, that you didn’t know the man you’ve been sharing your body with for months snores like an old engine?

Shame kicks your heart for no good reason.

Closing your eyes again, you try to drop a mental bucket of freezing water on yourself. You need to get up before your sleep-stupid brain—too drowned in gooey slumber to activate defense mechanisms—digs up some other buried regrets concerning the hunter sleeping below you.

Gently, you grab his hips for leverage and push yourself up—about five centimeters, before Mando’s tree-trunk arms tighten around your waist and shove you back down. A murmur that doesn’t sound like Basic drawls above your head.

You can’t pretend to be annoyed. Your drowsiness is stronger than logic, pulls you like gravity to sink into the Mandalorian, and you let it. If you close your eyes and let your other senses guide you, if you focus on his sleepy mumbles and the steady _liiift-drooop_ of his chest, you can pretend this is a normal occurrence. Domestic. You can imagine he’s purposefully holding you, whispering sweet nothings instead of fragments of his subconscious. Perhaps your little fantasy triggers emergency alarms somewhere in the surface, but your mind is underwater, where it can indulge. _Five more minutes_ , you lie to yourself, _five more minutes before I have to wake up and remember._

With heavy eyelids, you’re ready to doze off again when his palm traces the side of your waist, past your ribs. And closes around your breast.

You gasp. Mando’s chest swells and deflates with the same languid rhythm: _liiift-drooop_ ; he’s still asleep. One of the snores twists into a grunt on its way out, and his fingers sink deeper into your flesh. Your senses perk up, grab the drowsiness and mold it into a sensual buzz, lazy but simmering. Stars, he wasn’t lying about the dirty dreams. It’s not that uncommon, you suppose—in the last six months you’ve had your share—but you had sex less than a week ago. How can he still want you this much—even unconscious? Or is it even a dirty dream? After all, he could think your boob is a…a pillow? Except for the occasional stirring, he’s comatose. He could be dreaming about anything, not necessarily sex, and not necessarily you.

Mando grumbles in a foreign tongue, his right forearm snug around your waist, making the fabric of the tunic ride up and uncover the tops of your thighs. His hand kneads your boob, slowly. Erotically. It’s a stark contrast to the first few times you were together, when everything was rough, quick, primal. It scratched the itch, got the job done. But once you became his go-to black market supplier—and, later, his go-to one-night stand—you noticed his touch became more skilled. Foreplay played out for longer, and he tried out _techniques_ on you: a tug here, a new motion of fingers there, always watching for your reaction, memorizing the ones you liked most. Those were the moments you felt fondest of him, when you pictured this fearsome bounty hunter blushing around an anatomy holobook, trying to learn his way around your body.

Now, though, you wish he hadn’t bothered. He learnt your body too well. Even asleep his muscle memory kicks in, and he has you writhing against him in seconds. Some pillows he must be dreaming about. His fingers massage your breast and brush against your covered nipple, as his other hand strokes up and down your waist. An errant moan escapes you. Your skin is fresh and well rested, _humming_ ; it picks up every little touch and amplifies it. You tend to be sensitive in the morning, but _kriff_ , a caress down your waist feels like he’s circling your clit. At some point you started rocking your hips on his belly, rubbing your thighs together to soothe the ache between. And the Mandalorian is still out cold, his breathing _liiift-drooop_ , while you pant and rut against him.

Yes, you should probably wake him up. But what if you do and it turns out he was dreaming about, like, kneading dough or something? No, you need to make sure first. Snaking a hand past the apex of your legs, you feel around for his crotch. It doesn’t take too long to hit jackpot: Your fingers bump into a rock hard erection. It twitches when you brush it, and a ragged exhale bypasses the modulator above you. Maker. Definitely not a kneading-dough dream, then.

Okay, okay. _Breathe_. You could try to ignore it, screw your eyes shot and go back to sleep. The idea flies out the window when the hand on your waist drops to your belly, right above where you need it. Nope, no you can’t ignore it. He squeezes your breast hard. You fight back a moan. You could slip a hand into your underwear and take care of the issue yourself, but you’re not comfortable touching yourself on top of him while he’s unconscious. You don’t think he’d mind, but it feels wrong. Either you slip to the fresher to get yourself off, or you wake him up so he can finish what he started.

“Mando,” you croak, your voice a gravel road. You swallow down the morning grit and tap his arm. “Mando, wake up. Hey.” He stirs, accidentally lifting the tunic until your panties are visible, but continues his ministrations. “ _Mando._ ”

His hands slow to a halt and his breathing stutters. _Lift-dropdrop_. Rewiring each limb to his brain, it takes the Mandalorian a moment to figure out where he is. He pats you down like he’s checking for weapons, trying to recognize the body on top of his, which doesn’t help your growing arousal. Your whimper is what finally pulls him to the surface. The helmet tilts to look down at you, cold beskar brushing your cheek.

“Maker,” he whispers above you, looking down to find his hands on you, not exactly in a chastely position. Then, panicked, “Maker, I’m—I’m sorry—I-I didn’t mean…” his hands are off you like you burned him, and he pushes himself to his elbows, trying to get off the bed. “Was dreaming and—I’m sorry, I—”

“No,” you pant, reaching for his hands and placing them on your waist. “No, please.” Your shoulders push him to lay him back down. “Please, keep going.”

“You…you want—?”

“ _Uh-huh_.” Your thoughts are scrambled—arousal, sleep, excitement all in the same head-spinning melting pot. If he doesn’t touch you soon, you’re going to implode. “You were touching me.”

“I didn’t—”

“I know,” you gasp. “You didn’t mean it, but stars, please. I—” you swallow “—I need you.”

He stills. It probably takes him a moment to process waking up, the panic of thinking you were trying to slip away from his groping, the surprise of learning you wanted it. But, lucky for you, the Mandalorian adapts fast. Grunting, he slips his hand below your tunic and finds your nipple. You whimper. He takes the cue and massages your breast with more dexterity than before, with purpose. Another wide palm slithers down your tummy, below your underwear. When his index dips into your slit, your whole body shudders.

“Easy.” Gritty and modulated, his voice calms you, drops you into a comfortable, sleepy-aroused state. Soothing your sternum, he collects your slick with two fingers and smears it around your swollen folds, gets you nice and ready even though you could take two of him right now. “ _Shit_. Didn’t know… I thought I could handle it. Sleeping with you.” Two fingers press hard into your clit, and your hips buckle. You’re already making a mess on his tunic, spilling past your panties and down your thighs, but he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. He draws tight circles around your bundle of nerves, pulling slick and gasps from you. “I was dreaming about you.”

Fuck, that’s right. You gasp and remember he’s still stiff and throbbing below you. Angling your hand over the arm working magic between your thighs, you dip past his fingers and down his trousers. His breath hitches when you unzip his trousers and slip your hand below his underwear, pausing to scratch the course hair. His fingers move up and down your clit to encourage you, and you feel like being a good sport today. You don’t tease him, instead wrap your hand around the base of his cock and pull it outside.

“What were you dreaming?” you slur, focused on how deliciously heavy he weighs on your fist. You slowly jerk him off, your wrist limp, but his length throbs all the same.

“ _Fuck_. The—the shower.” His erection curves up until its head brushes his hand rubbing between your thighs. It’s a snug position: Your fingers bump against his as each of you work on getting the other off. “The sh-shower, you— _kriff_. You were so p-pretty. Wet. Rub—rubbing up against m-me.” Your hand is trailing down the shaft when he pushes a finger inside you, and your knuckles brush for a second. A quick, flashing thought reminds you you’ve never held his hand. The thought gone as fast as it came.

“We…we could go to the hot springs,” you mewl. Maker, it even takes _you_ by surprise that you said it. There’s no time for hot springs with the deadline—you know it, he knows it. But the thought of taking him inside that scalding, bubbling water makes your walls flutter and his cock jump. Another finger joins the first inside you, and the hand on your sternum lowers to circle your clit. Your head drops to his chest, and he moans when you clutch his cock tighter. “Stars, you’d feel so—so good inside me. In the pools.” Logic escapes you like sand through a fist, each grain a different reason why this hot springs fantasy will never happen. When his fingers curl and push against your g-spot, you almost believe it.

“You’d like that?” Mando quickens the motions on his fingers; the pleasure makes it a challenge to keep tugging on his cock. “You want me to fuck you out in the open, where anyone can see?”

You nod and whimper and, maker, heat blooms in your chest and travels down to your core, where your pelvic muscles pulse and contract, and you know he can feel it— _stars_ he must know how close you are because he slips a third finger inside and you’re gone. Like someone pushed you off the edge of a cliff, your head spirals down a precipice, trying to process the red rush that takes over your limbs. Your mouth is open, and maybe you’re moaning, but your thoughts are swimming in the dark, and all you hear is _Mando—Mando—Mando_ , along with the sucking noise of his fingers penetrating you.

Your senses come back to you in blotches. Wide, calloused hands playing with your tits below the tunic. A modulated voice shushing you and whispering in a language you don’t understand. It’s surprisingly gentle, the way he handles you. It’s still sexual, but with a cozy touch, like he’s waking you up from a nap. Hands empty, sprawled by your sides, you let go of his cock when you came, but he doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t ask you to keep jerking him off, doesn’t coax your floppy arms back to his crotch. Instead, he wraps an arm around your waist and dips his hand back between your thighs. Your legs jump when he brushes your swollen lips.

“Maker. The fucking sounds you make when you cum…” he rasps. “One more.” Three fingers start rubbing your clit frantically. Instinctively, your hips try to run away from it, but the Mandalorian’s arm on your waist keeps you in place, makes you take it. You clench your fists.

“ _S-stars_ , Mando,” you sob. You’re going to cry. It’s too much. It feels like every swipe of his fingers triggers a tiny climax and they’re all building up to a huge one and— _maker_ —you can’t hold it back. You thrash helplessly on top of Mando, while he mumbles unintelligible praises, half Basic, half (you suppose) Mando’a. He encourages you to cum like he can feel it too, makes your muscles knot tighter and tighter and tighter—

The only reason you know you’re crying out is the raw scratch of your throat. Your cries turn to sobs, which turn to whines, which turn to mewls. You’re finally reduced to purring, closed-mouthed whimpers, as you chew your lips until you draw a drop of blood. Stirring with the occasional mini fireworks that spasm along your skin. Mando holds you solid against him, your tunic rolled up below your tits, and hums in approval. So much for five more minutes.

Your heartbeat goes from a rapid drumming, like a kitten’s, to a slow beating that tries to coax you back to sleep. You almost let it, lulled by Mando’s fingers quietly sinking to your scalp, massaging the roots. But your knee bends and your calf brushes the stiff cock you abandoned earlier. Mando hisses as you look down to find his cock curled up and leaking, the color of a bruise. Your mouth waters. Moving weakly, limbs made of rubber, you slide down his torso and turn around to face him, kneeling between his legs.

You lick your palms and wrap them around his cock, pumping in time with his stunted thrusts. They look like doll hands around it, dwarfed by his girth. You wonder, as you often do when you have him so close, how in maker’s name he’s able to fit inside you.

“Stars, you always get so hard.” The tip of his cock spurts a white pearl when you blow hot air on it. 

He chokes. “You—you don’t have to—”

“But do you want me to?”

The blankets stretch beneath your knees when he fists them, as you run your hands along his thighs. There is a mountain range of bumpy seams along his trousers, where he sewed tiny holes shut. He should’ve thrown this pair out months ago, just like those old cloaks you found in the crate. Perhaps he clings to this stuff for a sense of familiarity. He leads such a transient life, maybe the worn-out pants, the empty plasma cartridges are his constants. His home.

You breathe humid mist on his cockhead and dig your fingers into his thighs.

“Fuck, of— _of course I want it_. _Kriff_.” His hips buckle and his cock brushes your lips, sticking a bead of precum on them. Licking your lips, you slither a hand into the mess you made on your panties and gather your slick, paint your palm with it, and fist his cock. The blankets stretch tighter beneath your knees. But when you wrap your lips around that bulbous tip, Mando lets go of the blankets and all courtesies to tangle his hands on your hair. “Ju—just like that. _Mmm_. Shit, I missed this pretty m-mouth.” You take him a little deeper and suck hard, making him inhale sharply.

Blowing him should not feel this satisfying. The salty taste of his pleasure shouldn’t make you clench around nothing. But when you curl your tongue along his length and dip it into the head’s slit, he grunts low and strangled, and your chest contracts. Drool dribbles past your lips, down his shaft, and pools around the fists pumping what your mouth can’t fit. Sometimes you really can’t believe he’s this fucking big—that you can take him into your mouth, and you’ll still need two fists to jerk off what you can’t reach. It fills you with awe. It stabs at your pride a little, too. You used to be able to take all of him, but now when you try relaxing your throat to swallow him deeper, your airway’s cut off. But you’re no quitter. You refuse to believe you can’t take him anymore. Stubbornly, you feed yourself more of his length, gag on it, take him deeper, choke on it. Mando pulls you off him.

“Don’t hurt yourself.” He soothes the roots of your hair. “I don’t need—”

If anything his reassurance makes you try harder. Breathing through your nose, you dive into his cock, swallowing and tasting, eventually getting down far enough to remove one of your fists. Some half-formed words leave his throat tightly, like he’s gargling sentences, and you moan around him. You won’t be able to take him further. Maker, you’re really rusty. Plus, it’s like he grows thicker and longer the deeper you take him. So you work with what you have, bob your head down in time with your raising hand, hollow your cheeks, swallow around him. You do everything you can to satisfy him.

Maybe, if you give him a good enough memory, you’ll become his constant, and he won’t need to hold on to junk for stability. If you try hard enough, maybe he’ll stay. Naïve illusions your mind allows before you have to fully wake up.

His legs begin to shake and you suck harder and faster, tasting his skin and feeling his veins throb on your tongue. And then his hips thrust up, and he pulls you off him to warn you. “I… _ngh_ , gonna…”

You fight the pull of his hands and engulf him deeper. One last pump, one last flick of your tongue, and you’re rewarded. Ropes of cum shoot into your throat, one after the other. And he keeps going, string after string after string, hot and dense on your tongue, until he’s spilling more cum than you can swallow, so you let it gather in your mouth. He tastes perfect, masculine and musky, a thick consistency you’d almost forgotten. You feel him go soft in your mouth, which rarely happens—sometimes it’s like the default state of his cock is stiff and throbbing. He tucks himself back into his pants as you swallow his cum.

Panting in turns, his head against the blankets and yours resting on his hipbone, you let the last bit of sleep escape you. And yet neither of you move, like time stopped explicitly to give you two a quiet moment. For a second, the volume around the siege and the deadline quiets down. There’s only Mando’s soft gasps, his hand playing with your hair.

“Still cold?” he eventually mumbles.

You laugh. “A little, yeah.”

You crawl up his torso until your ear rests against his unarmored chest. And it’s not awkward or unnatural like you expected. He doesn’t shove you off him, doesn’t make up some half-assed excuse to get up, doesn’t even seem to mind the extra heat of your body on his. Fingers tangled in your scalp, the lower edge of his helmet on the crown of your head, he lets you rest on him, hear his heartbeat. He must still be half asleep.

“You’ve been using my soap?” a low baritone rumbles against you.

“Yeah. Was I supposed to bring my own?”

“No.” His chest trembles with what you assume is a chuckle. “No, I just…you smell like me.”

Before you can come up with an answer, a string of whimpers float from the baby’s hammock inside the cot. Mando’s muscles tense up immediately, his dad instincts pristine. The fifth day is officially running its course.

≈

Days five and six gust through you as the salty breeze that you’ve heard lifts sand clouds on Scarif. The Mandalorian, the kid, and you fall into an easy rhythm, living in your own volcanic limbo, far from talk of sieges and bounties and ration packs. The ticking of the ten-day clock gets more faint every day, to the point where you sometimes wake up with Mando’s arm slung over your shoulder, thinking that asshole Republic official was a night terror. As someone whose life is going as smoothly as a hyperspace ride with a missing thruster and three percent fuel, you shouldn’t be sleeping as peacefully as you are. But the Mandalorian turns out to be pretty good company. He doesn’t overwork you and indulges you in some conversation when he’s in the mood. It’s inconsequential small talk, but every day he offers one or two more quips about his opinion on the Guild code or the price of fuel, and you wear those extra sentences like insignias.

In fact, every once in a while, he slips and tells you something about him. One time you mentioned that you made a mean Jorgan fruit cake, and the Mandalorian, shyly, told you he was allergic. Furtively, you collect these trivia facts about him, like you’re shoplifting. After all, it’s only an accident that you ended up here. The duty-ridden Mandalorian wouldn’t leave you to fend for yourself, not with imps staking out your home, so he tolerates you on his ship. This new proximity between you is incidental; it has a ten-day expiration date. _Accident_ , that should be your mantra, you should scribble it on your arm to remember it. But, maker, you don’t. He makes it so easy to forget.

It becomes particularly, _dangerously_ , easy to believe that you’re a guest on the Razor Crest instead of a refugee on the seventh night.

The baby was suspiciously quiet around the hull while you and Mando were crouched over a motor, when you heard munching coming from a crate. A pair of shiny black marbles blinked at Mando from the bottom of the storage box, buried in weeks’ worth of ration packs. _Empty_ ration packs.

Frog Boy cried and croaked well into the night, overwhelmed by what you could only imagine was a hurricane inside his stomach. Mando alternated between soothing a palm on his back, sternly chastising him, and shushing him softly. The baby’s wrath, however, demanded to be heard. Tears weren’t coming out anymore by the time he was reduced to a beige-green bundle of hiccups and shaking sobs, slowly losing power until he shut down and passed out in his pram.

That’s how you and Mando end up in the cockpit, ears ringing and dizzy with the newfound silence. He mechanically rocks the open pram with one hand and picks at the leader armrest of the pilot’s chair with the other. And maybe it’s the hours of ear-drum torture you were both subjected to, or the mental strain from trying to figure out the maker-forsaken jammer for six days. Whatever the reason, his shields are down. The Mandalorian leans back on his chair, rests an ankle on his knee, and trades stories with you like you’re old pals instead of…instead of whatever you really are.

“What about that Corellian chiss?” you ask, a goofy smile that you don’t bother fighting straining your cheeks. “The one that kept yelling he cut a deal with you.”

Blinking green sensors from the control panel twinkle on his helmet, the only source of light available since the white cockpit lights would wake up the kid, and the lava rivers chose to remain in their solid state tonight.

The Mandalorian chuckles. “Offered me a thousand credits to let ‘im go. I grabbed them and said I’d think about it.”

You narrow your eyes playfully. “I thought Mandalorians were bound to honor their word.”

“We are. I did think about it,” he whispers, his voice curving around the modulator and gaining a light baritone. Playful. “After I thought about it, I decided to turn him in.”

“Asshole,” you say, but the smile on your face grows wider and bypasses any sort of bite in your words. It’s rare and exciting to see him like this. Relaxed, open. A little cocky, too. 

He huffs. “You’re one to talk. You’re gonna tell me that piece of junk you sold Karga was really the first chain code reader invented?”

“It looked the part.” The chair’s leather arm creaks when you rest your elbow on it, and your open palm cradles your cheek. “And it _was_ a chain code reader, just not as old as he thought. Plus, he loved it. He framed it.” The copilot seat rolls back and forth in a semicircle. You feel game, giddy. And yet it’s not until your foot brushes his leg that you realize you’re flirting.

“Karga would frame a taxidermy womprat if you told him it was the first-ever Wookie.” 

A loud chuckle escapes you at that, and the Mandalorian shushes you with an index over where his mouth should be, tilting the helmet towards the pram. You mouth a _sorry_ , but give him a wide smile.

That’s a pretty accurate representation of his employer, though. Greef Karga has always been more circus ringmaster than Guild leader. Whenever one of his employees comes back from a job, he proclaims the hunter’s prowess and fearsome achievements. With his booming voice and white teeth meant to reflect stage lights, every time he turns you expect him to whip out a hoop and have a fearsome rancor jump through it. But what makes him perfect for the job is his recruiting capacity: He opens a flap of his circus tent and gives people an enticing glimpse into the wonders of Guildland. Sooner or later, all his hunters find themselves metaphorically pedaling on a monocycle for the reluctant audience at the cantina, because more than employees, they’re acts. All except Mando.

That’s what first attracted you about the Mandalorian, that day you met him at the cantina. In came a bona fide bounty hunter, probably the only one in Nevarro who took the job seriously, with presence and reputation enough to sober up every lounging drunk. You remember how confused you were, watching this man who looked like he belonged to some prodigious militia’s high ranks exchange fobs for money with Greef Karga. The weight of his stare has heavier than the armor he wore, even then, as you pretended not to notice, shuffling cards and feeling your ears grow warm. What was a Mandalorian doing in Nevarro? And what interest could a bounty hunter of his caliber take in you? He didn’t stop staring you down until Karga told him to place a bet or beat it.

The first question was answered when you found an abandoned Mandalorian covert underground; the second remains a mystery. That’s not modesty—you genuinely have no idea what drove him to your store two days later, asking if you could get your hands on a set of pre-Imperial thrusters for him, claiming Greef recommended you, which you highly doubted. It was even more surprising, though, to watch his beskar silhouette push open your store’s door two weeks later, since you didn’t exactly give him the friends and family discount the first time. 

After his first few visits, though, he stopped letting you rip him off so easily. It would take hours before you two could agree on a price. Right when you were about to compromise, he’d _siiiiigghhhh_ like it physically pained him and let you charge him a little over what he knew and you knew was the real value of whatever he was buying.

The Mandalorian became an intermittent presence around your store. Eventually you found yourself snapping your head towards the sound of boots walking inside, sick excitement swirling in your belly, and feeling your shoulders deflate when it wasn’t a T-visor that met your eyes. Soon he became, by far, your favorite client. You liked that he had a little fight in him, that he didn’t just mumble passive aggressive remarks about price tags like the rest of them. He could smell your bullshit from five lightyears away, argue for _hours,_ yet he usually let you get away with it.

Sometimes it took him weeks to come back, sometimes a few hours. That’s something you’ve never been able to wrap your head around, how nomadic his life is. It’s like he’s perpetually running away from himself. This week’s probably the longest he’s ever spent in Nevarro. In your case, this week’s the longest you’ve ever spent away from your house, and you already feel your life slipping away from your grasp, like a kite that will fly into oblivion if you let go of its cord.

“Can’t remember if that chain code reader burnt in the fire,” the Mandalorian whispers. The baby sniffs, and Mando’s fingers automatically scratch between his petal ears. The kid settles again, like a charm.

You shake your head. “Duma beat you to it.” The copilot chair swings to the right, and your foot brushes his knee with enough nonchalance that it could’ve been an accident. “Got it in a round of sabacc. Karga was inconsolable.” Your chair swerves back around, but Mando catches your ankle before it can bump against his leg.

“I don’t understand how you can…mingle with her.” He slides your boot off and lays your foot on his lap. You’re about to ask what he’s doing when he starts massaging your ankle with both hands. He kneads the skin with enough nonchalance that you could pretend this is some ancient ritual between you, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Gloved fingers push your pantleg up and sink into your calf’s exposed skin.

“Duma?” The sensation on your shins spreads to the rest of your body, thick as honey. “She’s not that bad.”

Duma, con artist extraordinaire, black market superstar who trades shit even you wouldn’t touch. She’s only kind of a jerk by Nevarran standards. Admittedly, people get hyper aware of where their valuables are when she’s around, double-checking that credit-weight on their pockets hasn’t disappeared. But in a planet where pulling a blaster on thy neighbor isn’t a big deal, a quick-tongued scammer is on the nicer side of the spectrum. Sometimes, she even shares some of her old wives’ sayings with you, those that make her sound like she’s perpetually peering into a crystal ball.

 _If you don’t know who you are_ , she said one windy night, while you waited for your joint package of banned Corellian astromechs, _everyone is a stranger_.

The Mandalorian grunts, visor aimed to your calf. “You kidding? Everyone knows her store is full of stolen shit.”

That sentence makes his fingers, so gentle on your skin, sting.

“So is mine,” you say carefully.

“That’s different,” he replies, not a speck of doubt in his perfect, artificial voice. “You only buy that stuff, resell it. Hard to get anything clean these days anyway.” He shakes his head. “She steals it. She takes advantage of people and _steals it_. There’s no honor in theft.”

The orange tips of his gloves suddenly feel freezing on your legs. The massage gets a bit rougher too, his displeasure rising by thinking about the sin of—gasp— _theft_. You wonder, unreasonably worried, if honest, straightforward business is a tenet in the Mandalorian Code of Honor. Because if it were, you’d be in trouble.

“It’s disgraceful,” he continues sternly, a judge passing sentence. “People here, they don’t—they only care about money.”

That’s the real stab in the back, the slap across the face. And he feels it, how your leg flinches and starts retreating from his lap. He must have felt it, because the visor rises to your face, warm with indignation and gallons of shame. A glance, and he reads you in a heartbeat. Pulling your leg back to his hands, he’s probably wide-eyed under the helmet, hearing his words play back.

“I didn’t mean—”

“No, you’re right,” you say with a smile that tastes bitter. And that’s the worst part, that he _is_ right. The planet is a skughole, where ninety percent of the population has priors, and the remaining ten hasn’t been caught yet. Why would Mandalorians, with all their hard honor and loyal sense of community, have anything but disdain for this place? Every one of you must seem like cavepeople to these mighty warriors, swinging clubs to steal each other’s bantha meat. However, all that bottled shame, uncorked now, drips into your head in the shape of resentment.

Your own laughter startles you, short and shrill like a witch’s. “Stars, Mando, I hope I don’t get you court-martialed. Does your Creed even allow you to _mingle_ with people like me?”

The Mandalorian isn’t laughing.

“People like you?” he asks lowly.

“People here,” you quote back at him, voice dripping with venom. _I used to sit around and wait for you to get bored with me_ , you want to tell him, _to realize I could never be at the level of a Mandalorian. And then you did, and you left_. But that would be the adult thing to say, and you’re looking for petty fodder. “Knight in shining armor like you, I picture you whisking away some blushing princess from an exotic land. Try Naboo, they say women there are just darlings.” Verbal vomit, all of it. Every phrase you regret more than the last, but his words, the way he spat them, poison your head. _People here_.

The pressure on your leg ceases, but his hand remains there. T-visor square on your face, he stares you down silently. Your words echo in your head, and the indignant heat in your head cools down, decomposing into shame. The Mandalorian doesn’t move, safe for the armored chest that expands and shrinks.

Then, a gossamer-thin murmr: “You don’t know.”

The helmet lowers, and you share a stale silence. His hands apply pressure on your calf again, and you watch him run his hands over you. He’s thinking so loudly you can almost hear it. It’s his habit to inspect every word, every sentence, dust them for prints and catalogue their blood splatter; it manifests as long goosebump-inducing silences. 

It takes you by surprise when he finally speaks.

“I can’t figure you out,” he says frustrated, more to himself than you. “You’re fucking…complex. Clever. Insolent.” He tugs one glove off, and lets his naked hand fall on your leg. His fingers sink into your flesh, rub it, like he’s looking for answers there. “And soft too, sometimes.” His hand caresses up your calf, warm and enticing. “You’re soft here.”

The gentle touch works as an olive branch that you hesitantly accept. Nestling your leg deeper into his lap, you let his hands and words bask over you, memorizing them already, knowing you’ll be dissecting them all night. You two are similar in that regard, you suppose.

Here in the partial dark, it’s easier to voice the unspeakable, to stop repressing uncomfortable sentiments. But it feels like you both broke some precarious balance tonight, some unspoken rule that your relationship depended on.

White flashes from the control panel, illuminating the cockpit for a millisecond like lightning. You whip your heads to the source, hearts pounding like you got caught red-handed doing something shameful. It’s only the oil light, it brings a stop to the caresses.

The Mandalorian’s hand drops to his side, and he clears his throat. “You…you should get some rest.”

Later that night, you toss and turn on your storage crate—alone, since Mando claimed he wanted to work some extra hours on the jammer before bed—and your head roundabout-spins with a memory. That night you never, ever let yourself think about.

What was it, eight months after the day you met at the cantina? By that point, Mando had become a regular. He brought more requests every time he stepped into your store, full lists of gear you needed to get for him, always urgently, top priority. He took to the habit of pacing around the reception while you made calls and welded plaques—a sign of distrust, you thought at first, until you invited him inside the workshop one day. Fetching you wrenches, checking inventory, he used to make himself useful while you fixed his gear. It became a silent camaraderie and then some more, once a T-visor started floating behind your eyelids at night. The simmering heat between you, just short of boiling point, is what you remember most—that and the self-doubt. _Does he feel it too? Am I making it up?_ All those hours you’d spend with your imaginary magnifying glass, Girl Detective, searching for proof that he felt at least a fraction of the attraction you did.

And then, that night. _The Night_. Working later than usual, you were slumped over a holomap, halfheartedly searching for that moon where you’d heard you could get a motor compatible with the Razor Crest. Biting into a peach, eyes glazed from the artificial blue light, you were more focused on the man to your right. He’d never been fidgety, but the Mandalorian had been still as a statue for the better part of the evening, watching you. Simply observing.

No need for words when you gently sucked into the fruit’s meat, eyes hesitantly on him. No need, when he balled a fist. The dense tension, your warming belly, the subtle angling of his chest towards you, they spoke for themselves. The trickle of juice out the corner of your mouth that never splattered on the floor. Mando’s gloved thumb on your chin, scooping the dribble. Pushing it past your lips.

The rest was blurry, sickly. You were lifted to sit on your worktable, pants around your ankles, your hands shaky on the bounty hunter’s belt. Then, that overwhelming stretch, the harsh thrusts, the slapping sounds. It was quick, watery like a fever dream, desperate. You remember shivering against each other, after. Hand on his chest, you gently signaled him to ease out so you could jump down the bench.

“Where are you going?” he asked, as you collected your belongings to call it a night.

“Upstairs,” you said, along with all that implied. _Upstairs to my apartment, to my bed, where we can keep going. Where you can spend the night._

The air shifted in the room, the hunter tensed. A slow nod, a polite _thank you_ for the day’s work, and he was out of the store without a glance back. You’d be hard-pressed to think of a time you felt so stupid. A simple “upstairs”, the promise of beyond one-night stands, was enough to scare him away. That evening set the tone for the rest of your partnership.

Right now, pretending to be asleep, lulled by his footsteps above, you wonder how different everything would’ve been, had he stayed that one night.

≈

Day eight, morning. You wake up with a headache. Alone.

You walk outside the ship, ready to punch in for work, when you stumble upon a control panel about as tall as the baby, resting on a rectangular surface. Your heart shrinks.

The jammer sits ominously on the bottom of the ramp, waiting for you. It’s completely rewired, all done. You stare each other down like gunslingers. Mando clearly placed it there specifically so you would find it. Now, the question becomes: How are you supposed to take this?

Did he leave it there as a farewell gift? A termination letter? A symbol he has no use for you?

You don’t ask, and the bounty hunter doesn’t explain.

There’s a conversation that needs to happen, now that your business here is done. But, even if last night hadn’t left and awkward pit between you, his little surprise today digs a deeper well. You avoid each other for most of the day, which proves an exercise in stealth, since the Razor Crest is not equipped with private spots or quarters. Nowhere to hide. So, thank the Maker for the kid.

The little one waddles after you while you kill time on the lava flats, tugging on your long skirts and babbling at the sky. All cute ears and wide eyes, the baby’s a little rascal. You catch him scratching at dark volcanic rock with his six sharp claws, trying to take a souvenir from Nevarro. Even he must know he’ll be leaving soon.

“Here,” you tell him, crouching down to his level. You spot a large boulder and turn it. Below, hidden like an oyster’s pearls, shiny obsidian chips reveal themselves to the gray sky, their black shimmer strangely comforting. You smile. For all its shortcomings, there’s beauty in Nevarro, if you know where to look.

The baby coos delighted, and you feel ridiculously proud. His little feet rush to get his loot, but you laugh and hook your arm around him before he can cut himself with the sharper chips. You pick out a tiny pebble for him, irregular but with rounded-out, baby-proof edges, and let him pry it from your hands. He inspects his treasure meticulously, before looking up at you and giggling. But then the toddler turns his gaze behind your back and swings the pebble in the air, showing it off to someone off frame.

When you turn, a mass of beskar stands behind you. Maker knows how long he’s been watching, but you share a silent second with the kid’s coos as background noise, both of you waiting for the other to speak first.

“I’m going to scout the area,” he says after a moment. “Can you watch the kid, please?”

As the baby plays gleefully on hardened magma, you wonder what the Mandalorian finds so repulsive about this planet. It’s no Coruscant, but the kid likes it. How bad can it be, if even his baby likes it here?

“Sure,” is all you say.

The baby coos as Mando disappear from your sight, demanding your attention. This new toy doesn’t roll like his metal ball, but he makes a game of making it skitter across the ground, and racing you to see who can grab it first. Hand on your chest, you pretend to pant as he runs back to you triumphantly.

“You’re too fast, kid,” you say with fake gasps for breath.

He giggles and kicks the pebble, which lands below your skirts. The baby toddles towards you and lifts the edge of your skirts a breath above the ground. The fabric tickles his nose and he coos, as he crawls below them to reach his toy.

“Where is it?” a modulated voice asks behind you. Modulated, but not Mando’s. “The pet, where is it?”

Cold panic stabs you. The only helmeted man you know is scouting the area in the opposite direction. The click of a blaster’s safety behind you confirms your dread. Slowly you turn around, hands raised and feet trapping the baby between them to hold him from running out of your skirts. Tiny claws scratch patterns on your ankles, but you’re much more worried about the barrel pointed at your face and the stormtrooper holding it.

“I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Maker, your palms are sweating. You hope he can’t hear your voice shake. “I was paid to oil the ship. I-I haven’t seen any pets.”

“Wrinkled green animal? Nasty little bastard, bit my finger and then his nanny droid fucking shot me.” The blaster’s cold mouth kisses your forehead. “C’mon, sweetheart. I don’t wanna blow your pretty brains out.” The baby wriggles and fumbles between your ankles like he can tell there’s trouble outside. You hold him tighter in place.

The imp cocks his head, taking in your face. You wonder, panicked, if the Empire put a bounty on you. “Actually,” he says slowly, the blaster digging a dent on your skin. “They say he’s screwin’ some local chick. Man, I bet Nevarran pussy’s awesome.”

You remember those hours of lost sabacc games, how Duma fights nasty with nastier.

“And what am I supposed to do, get you her number?” Gravity starts to pulling your hands lower until your raised arms and your head make a fork. If you discreetly move back, you can try and get the blaster from him. Stars, where the hell is Mando? “Can I get back to work now?”

“Back to work? I don’t think licking the Mandalorian’s junk is considered work around here, honey.” The blaster, now digging into your windpipe, makes it painful when you swallow. A black glove grips your jaw tight—tighter, when you try to squirm away from him. The baby’s teeth and claws desperately sink into your legs, and you have to swallow a scream. “Let me tell you what I think. I think you own that store downtown, I think you helped that beskar clown get away, and I think that if you don’t tell me where that green piece of shit is right fucking now, I’ll take you to the Moff so we can ask him what _he_ thinks about—”

A gloved hand—black with yellow tips this time—drops heavy on the trooper’s shoulder and yanks him backwards into the ground. The white helmet hits volcanic rock with a yelp and a _thud_ , but both are quickly swallowed by the sound of cracking ribs when the Mandalorian lifts his boot and strikes down into the imp’s torso. The bounty hunter lifts his victim by the neck and slams him against the Razor Crest’s side, and you swear the ship sways a little from the raw strength of the blow.

 _“Who sent you here?”_ growls a booming voice that makes you flinch. Maker, you’ve never seen this side of the Mandalorian—the bounty hunter that gives grown men nightmares.

“N-n-nobody, _p-please_ —” A mean uppercut shatters the man’s remaining ribs.

The imp’s tortured screams, the Mandalorian’s panting, the wild, army-band drumming of your heart, none are loud enough to hide the distressed whimper below your skirts.

A pair of helmets, white and silver, whip around in your direction. For a fraction of a second Nevarro stops spinning on its axis, the stranger stops yelling, all four of you stand still in limbo, waiting to see who’ll react first. The answer: the kid. It’s a miracle his tiny lungs don’t pop like balloons when he wails long and high, so loud you worry the cry will echo all the way to the city.

The trooper reacts second. His knee hits Mando’s crotch, forcing the hunter’s grip to loosen around his neck. The stranger takes advantage of his captor’s spasm of pain and pushes him to the side, drops free to the ground in all fours, and pats around for his blaster. Another sharp bite on your shin melts the shock from your body. Scooping your skirts, you split your legs apart so the baby can crawl outside. He barely takes a step into the light before you snatch him into your arms, hold him close to your chest, and turn to run. The phantom touch of the blaster’s barrel still presses cold into your throat, your head pulses with blood, your veins sour with panic, and all you can think about is the ramp. The ramp, the hull, safety, Mando. Quickly, you look over your shoulder to see the Mandalorian pulling his weapon from its holster in the exact moment the imp fingers his blaster’s grip. The baby’s sobs hot and humid in your neck, your chin lowers to meet his little head. The ramp is too far away. Your arms wraps around the kid, and you shield him with your body as best you can.

A blaster shot zooms past you, chilling your spine, closing your eyes.

A second shot immediately follows.

A minute. Maybe two. A weak coo vibrates in the crook of your neck. You’re alive. _Stars above,_ you’re alive. The ringing in your ears softens slowly; the less you hear it, the further your joints uncramp. Eyes screwed shot, you’re curled around the kid, willing your stunted breaths to a more steady rhythm, when a hand touches your lower. You jerk away, flick your eyes open. A glimpse of beskar is enough to slow your heartbeat.

Wordlessly, Mando pulls you to his chest with more blunt force than you think he intended, wraps his arms around you, and holds you in a tight embrace. Maker, a sedative wouldn’t relax you so fast. The child stops fussing immediately, you melt into the Mandalorian’s arms. Tears sting your eyes, but you could stay here forever. Here in his arms, dark and muffled and warm, where the beskar breastplate against your cheek vibrates with his racing heart. The smell of soap still clings to him, but it’s overpowered by that of blaster residue. Somehow, both scents comfort you equally.

Eventually, Mando grabs your shoulders and pulls you away. He checks on the baby—passed out in your arms from stress, but otherwise unharmed—and settles both palms on your cheeks. A tear you’re trying your damnedest to contain rebels and slips past your eye. Dozens of salty insurgents follow until you’re properly crying like the kid.

“Hey,” he soothes, his fingers catching your tears. “Hey, you’re okay. We’re okay.” But his fingers, those thick, calloused fingers that can and probably _have_ snapped necks, quiver like twigs on your cheeks.

If anything, the comfort makes you sob harder until you’re sure it’s ugly: puffed eyes, runny nose, wet lashes. Stars, even the _baby_ stopped crying, you need to pull it together. You wouldn’t blame Mando if he shook you, yelled at you to stop. Instead he patiently brushes away every new tear and draws gentle circles on your cheeks until you’re able to take one full breath without shuddering. It’s such a jarring contrast: the man who looked ready to beat an imp to death and the man who’s awkwardly smoothing your hair, barely touching you, like he’s worried he’ll scar you.

Once the tears stop and your sniffing slows, you’re able to see past Mando’s shoulder, where white armor lies still on its stomach, dead. So that’s where the second shot landed. The first one though…

Your head turns to follow the invisible line of the shot that fired past you. There are no visible ricochets on the side of the Crest, no pulverized rocks on the ground. Your gaze continues along the starship, until… _stars_.

The imp missed you by a couple lightyears—which, unsurprising—but it did hit a target. Namely, it hit the Crest’s ramp. Its lower edge is pulverized, glowing red where the blaster hit it. But what draws a gasp from you is the jammer. Or what remains of it. The trooper’s shot missed you, but it hit the jammer dead center, bull’s-eye, perfectly. A handful of limp cables hang like hair on the ramp’s edge, dead with the hope that you could actually help the Mandalorian.

“ _Kriff._ ” You turn back to the T-visor. “Kriff, Mando. The jammer—”

“We need to go.” He takes the sleeping baby from your arms. “They know we’re here.”

You blink at him. “Go where?”

He hesitates. “Do you have any spare jammers at the store?”

Your thoughts rush through your inventory. _Jammers_. Stars, what is he planning now?

“Maybe. But I…I don’t know if they’ll fit the Crest.” He nods and starts towards the ship, leaving you to assess how fucked you are, if he’s willing to go back to your staked-out store.

≈

The Razor Crest is a lone silver smudge on dark canvas by the time you stop to rest. The city’s still too far away, but it shouldn’t be long before you can make out crumbling buildings. For now, though, there’s nothing but black lava flats and a blacker sky, plus a single nautical lantern resting on volcanic rock that creates more shadows than light. That’s all Mando is right now: a half-light, half-shadow outline erecting a lone tent in stony landscape.

Petal ears tickle your neck. The kid hasn’t woken up since he passed out, and you don’t blame him. The crash after that hardcore adrenaline high hit you hard too—you have to sway on your soles to stay upright as you watch the Mandalorian work. The hypnotic up-down-up-down of his arms pulling on ropes make your eyelids heavy, drooping until the thick canvas fabric stands in a pyramid. The tent, the lantern, the baby-pram combo and you are all the hunter had time to pack. You fled the Crest like you fled your home: rushed, scared, leaving too much behind, no idea you’d be back. It’s only happened twice, but you’re already sick of running.

Mando lifts the kid from your numb arms and nods at the tent. You crawl rather than walk inside. Twisting and turning on canvas fabric over hardened magma, slapping the caving walls off your face, knowing you’ll have a backache tomorrow, the tent still feels empty. And you feel so, so tired. So prematurely lonely your ribcage is like an iron-barred prison. One run-in with an imp, one brief taste of the bitter world you’d forgotten awaits outside, and the nest of illusions you’d crafted around the Mandalorian crashed down on your face, the way you wake up with a mini stroke when you’re falling on a dream and hit the ground. All that self-doubt returning, all those old questions nibbling at your guts, writing themselves on your skin. _Why didn’t you stay that first time? Why did you leave? Will you leave me again?_ But king among them: _What can I do to make you stay?_

Needy, stupid, childish questions.

The metallic _shin_ of the pram shield closing outside interrupts your private pity party. The lantern’s orange glow hovers orb-like outside, fuzzy through the tent’s fabric. Gloves push aside the tent’s flaps, settle the lantern next to your feet, and the Mandalorian drops to his knees. He doesn’t seem to notice the way you have to bend your legs to make room for him, how even when you sit up there’s barely enough tent for both of you. The visor is trained on your ankles, where the lower ends of the kids’ red scratches peek outside. Delicately, he hikes up your skirts.

His gasp. Your shudder.

The baby’s claws dug into you. You were expecting lothcat scratches, superficial and tender. These are wounds. Long gashes like trenches, dried blood around the edges, a red pearl for each baby tooth, all the way to your knees. Nasty, raw, real. Like lemon, his gaze on your gouged shins buzzes your flesh awake, makes it scream. The skin he told you was soft, the part of you he liked, ruined. You tug the skirts to hide it, but strong hands trap your wrists. His thumbs brush your pulse points, asking. You let go of the fabric.

A pouch in his belt pops open, a tube of bacta ointment inside. His gloves off, then your shoes, then your socks. Then his warm palms on your legs, and you could cry again just from the way his calloused fingers sink into your calves reassuringly, working the knots off your muscles. Then the bacta’s burn, and you flinch.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, helmet angled at your lower half, avoiding your eyes. “I…I’m not used to doing this. On somebody else.”

“It’s okay,” you reply, white-knuckling the tent floor.

“No, it’s not.” It’s a clipped, matter-of-fact statement. Bacta oozes onto his finger, and he rubs it gently on the outline of the child’s bite. Before you can ask what he meant, he gulps down a cloud of oxygen and continues, “Thank you. For protecting the kid.”

You truly can’t find it in yourself to be upset at the little one. If anything, you feel for him, how terrified he must have been under your skirts, enough to scratch you up this badly. Desperate, even though he couldn’t have known what was happening. Because he _couldn’t_ have known.

“It was…stars, Mando. It was like he felt something bad was happening. Like he knew.”

That dark well of a visor holds your gaze, unreadable. The Mandalorian nods, once, and dips his head to continue his ministration.

Silence settles inside the small tent once more. The lantern flickers between you, trembling like his long fingers on your legs, illuminating your face with a burnt amber. The helmet lifts to meet your eyes again, and you know he can see you. From the way his fingers tighten on the back of your calf, you know he can see all your doubts flashing in your eyes.

“Tell me,” he whispers.

It’s not that you don’t want to. Your needy questions gather in a clutter and open their beaks, chicks waiting for their mother to feed them. They want answers, every single one of them, _demand_ answers, fiercely chirping at him: _What’s so wrong about Nevarro? Why do you always leave? What are you running away from?_ Peeping desperately, pecking at their nest:

_If I asked, would you stay?_

But if you don’t like the answer, what then?

“Will it scar?” you ask instead. 

An assessing tilt of his helmet, followed by a short sigh. “Too early to tell.” Thick bacta covers his fingers, and he taps it gently on the tiny holes punctured by milk canines. “They’re deep, but not wide. Should close up fine.”

Your jaw clenches at the ointment’s bite. At your wounded vanity. “I guess—” you hiss when he starts unrolling a bandage around your calf “—I guess no more sundresses for me.”

That breezy quip meant to lighten the mood thickens the air around you, instead. His hands freeze, leaving the bandaging halfway done. The helmet zeroes down on your eyes.

“You protected the little one with your life,” speaks a strict, no-room-for-argument voice. The bounty hunter voice. “Showed valor, even though he’s not your responsibility.” Hands continue working the bandage, but the T-visor stays stern on your face. “I won’t forget that.” He ties a firm knot, and moves to patch up your other leg. “And when courage leaves scars, you wear them proudly. Understand?”

“But you said…” you whisper, barely a murmur that you hope he won’t catch. But the helmet tilts, and you’re trapped. “You said they were soft,” you relent, the words wet in your mouth. It’s vain to seek reassurance from him for something so superficial, downright childish, and you’ll be regretting it tomorrow. And yet the words just drip out.

Another trademark silence as he finishes dressing your wounds and holds on to your ankles. The visor expressionless as ever, but his bare fingers tremble. You just know he’s furrowing his eyebrows.

“I did,” he finally breathes, his tone gentle now. His fingers piano on your ankles, hesitant _tap-tap-tap_ s that make you uneasy, because what could possibly get the Mandalorian nervous?

A sheepish voice says, “But so are your hands. So—” he clears his throat “—so are…your eyes.” He straightens then, back rigid, bracing himself for the follow-up. When he continues, his voice is so low you have to lean in. “Your…your lips too, I imagine.”

“You—you’ve touched them. Before,” you supply, stupidly. Of all the things you could’ve said, all the ways you could’ve prompted him to come closer, your logic decided to get specific with him. _Technically_ , it rationalizes, _there’s no need to imagine because you’ve already touched my lips_. You wonder when he started turning all your thoughts to mush, goosebumps all over.

“Yeah.” His chest puffs, sucking courage from the air, and you can see—you can _feel_ how he’s going to take that leap of faith. Your heart hammers so hard you feel it in your temple. “But not like I want to.”

The lantern makes his armor look like molten gold, grand and gallant. The person inside tells a different story. Head hanging low, shoulders knotted, kneeling, he seems to be drowning in all that beskar. He looks, perhaps for the first time, like a mortal man. And this man, you want to lull him to sleep and cover him in a blanket and maybe rub his shoulders for a little while. You want to lead him back to your apartment—that storage room that still is, despite everything, your home—and peel off the armor until he’s nothing but flesh and bones to make him feel human again. You want to tell him that his life doesn’t boil down to his past; that he could have a future here on Nevarro, with you, if he wanted. You want to cover his lips with yours, breathe into his lungs, let him feel what it’s like to be kissed. Give him everything he thinks he can’t have.

All these wants eat up more time than you realize. The helmet hangs lower still, and he starts retreating from the tent. It’s you who stops him this time, curling your palms around his forearms to hold him inside the amber sanctuary. He must’ve thought the silence was rejection.

“The helmet,” you start before you’ve planned out what you’re going to say, “I know I can’t see you, but—” you look at the nautical lantern, its electric bulb frying seconds like mosquitoes, “—but if the lights are off…”

He nods, slowly. “If it’s dark,” he says, his voice a breath away from cracking, “if you can’t see me, the Way isn’t soiled. I can take it off.” Imposing words, a contract that stands between you, waiting for your signature. “Is that what you want?” His tone is gentle, but you can tell you’d be agreeing to much more than a kiss. That point of no return that you’ve both been postponing since the day he walked into the cantina makes itself known, finally, deep and mysterious like the bottom of a gorge.

You stare down into the abyss. “Yes.”

After a big gulp of air that puffs the golden breastplate, your hands come off his forearms, and you move in tandem, wordlessly. You rise to your knees and scoot back as far as the tent allows. He shuffles closer and takes the lantern, fiddles with the switch. The light shrinks back into its source, like a lighthouse that’s stopped searching. And the world is pitch black.

Your hearing is intact, though. Stunted breathing, the friction between tent fabric and tactical pants shuffling closer to you, the beating of your own heart. A soft _thud_ on the ground. Your skin fizzes, picks up every little sensation. The heavy atmosphere of low-altitude land, the moist gases of these lava-filled flats. A warm gust of breath on your forehead.

The Mandalorian’s hands find your collarbone and trail to the back of your head. The breathing gets closer, humid, and you’re millimeters away from its source. Your noses bump. You tilt your head to your right to make room for him, but he tilts his to his left. Now your foreheads bump. You just have to laugh.

An impatient sigh, followed by his rich natural voice. “How…how are we supposed to—”

“Like this,” you whisper, your hands landing on his eyebrows, moving to his cheeks. “Slowly.”

Coaxing his head down, it’s an eternity before his nose meets yours again. This time, though, you angle his head to the right, and your noses fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Your lips find his chin first, leave a tiny peck there, and move heavenward until they find his lower lip and trap it between them. You give him time to shake the cobwebs off those puberty instincts, to let his natural impulses guide him. Firm hands on your nape, he holds you tighter against his mouth, which opens a fraction to let your top lip inside it.

You have to brace your arms around his shoulders to keep steady. His mouth… maker. It’s warm and wet, his lips a bit dry, and with every passing second he lets you further inside, lets himself taste more of you. You suck on his lower lip and run your tongue along his bottom teeth. The vibration from his groan rattles in your voice box. His tongue comes forward to slide against yours.

Wrapped in all that darkness, in all that quiet, it’s impossible to tell how long you go on like that. Him licking into you, learning through you. Sucking on your tongue, running his along the roof of your mouth, slowly figuring out how he likes it. There’s no technique, barely any rhythm, but with Mando it feels right, like this is your first kiss too (at least, you assume it’s his first.) And you could stay kneeling with him until dawn, if not for the hard ground needling into the cuts on your legs.

“Wait,” you gasp, breaking away, “wait, my legs.”

“Kriff, right,” he says, catching his breath. “Sorry. Sorry, lay down.”

Once you’re on your back, the Mandalorian clambers over you, the tent walls snug around you. But you don’t mind the tight space. Especially not when Mando’s smooth tongue licks the side of your neck, right over your pulse point, where your heart skips three beats and lands hard. Your fingers tangle in his locks, nails lightly scratching his scalp, and it prompts a shattered sigh from him.

“I knew it,” he murmurs in the crook of your neck, his tongue out to taste the spot between your shoulder and neck that makes you shudder. “I knew it.”

But whatever it is he knows can wait, because his head dips to poke his tongue into the hollow of your neck. It feels strangely obscene, how he licks that shallow cavity, suggestive in a way you know he doesn’t mean. Still, your belly swirls, your core cramps.

His mouth on your sternum, tasting, licking, sucking until you think he’ll erode you. Your hands on his hair, tugging harder each time. Him grunting, you gasping. His fingers on your neckline, pulling until it hooks below your chest. Open-mouthed kisses around the swell of your breast, then warmed-up lips on your nipple. Panting, wheezing, growling; all kinds of muffled, secret sounds. His tongue on your other areola, swirling the tip around your bud. And that ache, stars that _ache_ , funneling from your hips into your core, pumping gallons of blood into your loins.

Your tunic is a black blot on the floor before you realize he was tugging it off. Stubble scratches down your torso, his palms close behind on your waist, his wet panting on your navel. You’re halfway through mentally charting your own body to figure out where his explorations might lead, when he pushes your skirts to your waist. By the time you process how stark naked you are, covered only by your panties, the Mandalorian’s mouth is making you forget again.

Now he’s on your hip, his palms on the sides of your thigh, his mouth below your underwear’s seam. He licks a long stripe down to your mid-thigh, his hands where his tongue has been, kneading, molding you. Soft locks slip from your grasp, so buried in your lower half you can’t reach them anymore. You rest a hand in your chest, instead. The beating inside startles you, stallion-galloping, vigorously enough to crack a rib. Slick lips mouth at the back of your knee, and your heart leaps.

But then he runs out of leg, his mouth reaches the bandages. And something breaks inside him. You feel it, how he flinches at the gauze, how his hands go limp on your thighs. The night can hide a lot, but not how he pulls back and straightens his back, drawing a barrier between you.

“This is a mistake,” he rasps, out of breath.

That thick blood pulsing in your veins thins immediately. Head spinning, you sit up to blindly search for him. For an explanation.

“Why?” Your heart in your stomach, your hands self-consciously running over your bandages.

“When I’m around, you…you get hurt. In some way.” The words cumbersome in the claustrophobic tent, swelling between you, pushing you apart. “Your house, your store.” A light touch on your leg’s dressing. “Now this.”

“I don’t care.” You blindly find his jaw and hold him planted in the ground, because he can’t do this to you again. He can’t leave you again.

“I do,” Mando says, choked. He cradles your elbows, but doesn’t pull you away. “When I saw that imp with a blaster on you …” He lets out a defeated sigh, one that stings worse than the scratches. “I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe. I’m a bounty hunter. Maker, the _Empire_ is after me. And the kid, you don’t know what he—”

“I like the kid,” you cut him off quickly. Blood rushes through your ears, you’re not listening to half of what he’s saying. “Sharp little teeth,” you laugh nervously, “but I like him.” Rubbing circles on his temple, you try to anchor him back to this moment. So much wasted time, so many masks, so many excuses. If you continue down your old path, ignoring this living thing between you, this organ you share, it’ll die before either of you have time to give it a name.

He speaks your name and it drifts in the night, sad as a sailor’s song. A plea.

“Tell me this isn’t real,” you whisper, closer to his face so he can feel your voice. “If it’s all in my head, we can go back to the way things were. Tell me this isn’t real and I’ll back off. We never have to talk about this again, I promise. Just be honest with me.”

His forehead leans against yours, and you feel the flutter of his eyelashes, the way he closes his eyes to think; how his fingers dig into your shoulders, and you hold on to each other for dear life.

“Lately,” he rasps, “you and the kid are all that feel real.”

His breath on you and yours on him, it’s like you’re trying to breathe life into each other. And maybe you do, because when his lips move on top of yours, you feel the tingle down your spine, the fizzling of nerve endings on your arms, wrapped around the Mandalorian’s shoulders. The ground meets your back once again—hard and stiff, yes—but solid and reliable, like the armored body hovering above you.

Tongue and teeth on your torso, sucking bruises that won’t fade yellow in a long time, Mando seems to be following a well-traveled path. But in your floating head, mushy from kisses and confessions, you can’t figure out where he’s heading. Lower still, his tongue on your belly, gasps on your navel. Maker, _where_ is he going? Your panties are around your ankles in a heartbeat, pulled free, and swallowed by the gloom right after. Then he nestles his nose right above your mound. A shiver wrecks you.

Flat against your folds, his tongue licks from the bottom of your cunt to the top, just shy of your clit. The ground opens up below you.

“ _Fuck_ ,” you scream into the back of your palm. It’s a warm, foreign sensation, that wet muscle licking between your thighs in long strokes. Your toes curl, your hands make fists, and you haven’t yet decided if you like the sensation before he’s doing it again, his tongue wider and more confident. It bends to scoop your slick, and you hear gulping, swallowing. An open-mouthed kiss on the bottom half of your cunt, his tongue poking your entrance. You hiss, he moans. Shit, okay, you _do_ like this. You like this so fucking much, why didn’t you do this before, _fuck_ —

You swear it’s an accident. Wet lips wrap around your clit—barely touch it, really—and your muscles jump. It’s completely a reflex, but your knee jerks up and hits him hard on the ribs. His grunt of pain sends you reeling.

“Shit. Shit, Mando, I’m sorry. Stars, I’m so sorry, are you okay?” You straighten your back and blindly reach out for him.

“I’m fine,” he replies and pushes his hands on your hips to return to your previous position. “Lay back down.”

“I’m sorry, I just never…” The Mandalorian gives you radio silence. Your swallow around the embarrassment, your voice tiny, “Nobody’s ever done that.”

It’s not like you’ve never heard of this, obviously. Nevarro is small and people get bored, so all kinds of perversions happen beyond that stone arc. But _that_ was more of an urban legend, the kind of mysterious actions only performed by cousins of friends’ neighbors.

“Me neither.” Thumbs on your inner thighs, the Mandalorian’s voice dips like yours, whispering even though you’re alone for kilometers. “Never done it, I mean. To anyone else.” Sinking back between your thighs, he speaks into your core, warming and chilling you simultaneously. “But is it okay? Does…does it feel good?”

 _Good_ , he says. Plain old _good_. Like he didn’t make you see stars.

“Yes. Stars, Mando it’s so good,” you answer.

Attention’s back on your outer lips, which is wiser if he doesn’t want a broken rib. Carefully, he sucks on them, licks them, the sensation corkscrewing into your belly, letting you simmer. Hands dip into his locks again, give a tiny pull that makes the Mandalorian groan. You don’t expect the tremor, how his growl rocks between your hips and makes your pelvic muscles flex. You stop the whimper before it peaks.

“Let me hear you,” Mando mumbles, right before his tongue snakes deeper, moving to your inner lips and sucking on one between his teeth.

“Stars, your mouth is so good,” you whimper, your voice whinier than you intended, but he moans into your fold and gives you another wave of vibration that settles deep in your womb. _Maker_. Both index fingers press on the sides of your cunt, massaging your outer lips, getting you wetter, if that’s even possible. “Move…move up a little bit. _Ngh_ , please.”

This time, when his mouth seals over your clit you don’t kick him; you couldn’t if you wanted to. Your bent legs grow rigid as wood, shaking and spasming as you try to process the feeling, the hard sucking and the slurping. Oh, maker, it’s too much. Your mouth opens silently for a second. Two seconds. Three—and you’re sobbing into the dark abyss above you, mewling lewdly, making noises that belong to pain more than pleasure. Nothing hurts, though, not even close. His mouth is gentle but insistent, as thorough as you’ve known him to be in everything he puts his mind into. It’s delirious, how he can command your body like it belongs to him, how he can stir a rebellion inside you.

Mostly, it’s personal. His bare face buried in your folds, he probably feels more naked than you. And he’s right, in a way. Buried in gloom, your surroundings darker than behind your eyelids, you can finally read him. There’s that fabled discipline, when he coaxes a finger inside you and efficiently finds that special spot. The bounty hunter remembers how much pressure you prefer, that if he strokes in a tight circle a string of moans fall from your mouth. And there’s that stranger behind the armor. He’s the one whose breath stutters against your mound, whose groans tangle with your whimpers. He, not the hunter, moves mouth and lips on your cunt like he’s kissing you again. He laps up your slick, drinks from you. His jaw works against you— _for_ you—opening wide and closing again for focused, indulgent attention.

It’s vulgar and dirty and sweet and intimate. It’s him, all of it. All his contradictions, wrapped in a moment. And this moment, it’s going to break you.

“M-mando, I…I think…” The sensation is different with his mouth: more physical, wetter, inevitable. But you’re pretty sure it’s an orgasm that makes your arms shake, your throat contract. Your nails dig into his scalp. On their own volition, your hips rock into his mouth, and he encourages it, hooking his arms around your thighs, pulling you— _shoving you_ into his face. “Mando, m’gonna—”

Warmth pours into your chest like a drink of spotchka. Searing heat consuming you, melting you into him. Legs cramping, chest heaving, head spinning, you can’t describe it, it’s like…like falling. Dropping from a cliff, no end in sight, only your heart in your throat and your brain expanding. He keeps going, though, through your whimpers and your convulsing and the obscene amount of slick that pulses out of you, down your slit, into his mouth. Grunting and moaning through it, the Mandalorian laps at you with that flat, wide muscle, soothing his palms over your thighs, until the tremors cease.

It hurts to unlock your knuckles from his scalp, as if your bones had been frozen in place. The Mandalorian kisses your thigh, your belly. A thin layer of sweat clings to your chest, but he licks there all the same. Eye level with you (or so you suppose), his lips return to yours, full circle. However, the taste on his lips is now yours, heady and thick. You think that you’ve marked him, somehow; that his mouth will forever taste slightly of you, no matter what he does, where he goes.

Clothed arms around your waist, he hauls you upright until he’s cross-legged and you’re sitting on his lap, legs to either side of him. His length is trapped in the waistband of his trousers, hard and long when you grind your hips against it. One hand on your hair, the other on your waist, he tightens his arms until your breasts are against his breastplate—barely brush it, before you jump back from its chill. He exhales, amused, and guides your hands to the hidden clasps of the armor. The permission blooms in your chest, and you eagerly unstrap the chestplate from him, throw it to the side to be lost in blackness. It’s barely left your fingers before his hands are digging into your back, clutching you as close to him as he can. You kiss again, deeply, but his forearms shake as they hold you, and you pull back slightly.

His voice wobbles when he explains, “If…if something happened to you, I wouldn’t—”

“It won’t,” you whisper into his lips, calmly so he believes you. “Nothing bad is going to happen.” You peck the corner of his mouth, stroke the sweat-drenched locks on the nape of his neck. “Don’t think about that.” You snake a hand into his trousers to hold his length so he physically _can’t_ think about it. The night will end and, come morning, questions, talk of jammers and imps, and negotiations will rule in his world again, it’s inevitable. But if nothing else, you want him to have this one night, a few hours of wordless touch, a sense of isolated vacuum. And this is the only way you know how to help him.

So you free his cock from its confinements and stroke it until it’s pulsing with life. He hisses, curses under his breath, and grabs your head to press it against the crook of his neck. He smells… _warm_ , if that makes sense. Clean but warm, like crackling firewood. You breathe him in deeply, so you’ll never forget, even if he leaves again.

A hand around his neck, feeling the bulging veins that throb when you run your thumb over the tip of his cock, you suck lightly on his pulse point. He’s grunting into your hair, hot and heavy on your palm, so perfectly thick you salivate. Angling your hips right above his cock, you lick a long stripe from the base of his neck to his ear, nibbling on his earlobe when you sink down on him. You moan against each other’s skin. Stars, he fills you so much better on this position, squeezing deeper and deeper into your slick walls until he reaches the end of you. Fingers digging into your waist, he helps you up with a squelching sound. You’re both gasping by the time his head catches against your entrance, feeling each other grow more swollen and wetter, before he lifts you by the waist and grinds you back down.

Together you find a pace; not hard or fast like you’re used to, _screwin’_ , like that imp said. But it’s definitely intense, if the quiver of your thighs and the wild percussions in his chest are to be believed. Feet hooked in the small of his back, fingernails in his scalp, you close your eyes and soak in it, in this exact instant. His sweaty locks on your shoulder, the smell of sex, the taste of his neck, the coarse hair grinding on your clit, his loud grunts on your ear. The rising tide on your belly, so close to breaking the dam that holds it.

“If I c-could,” Mando whispers hot in your ear, his thrusts messier, his cock so stiff and bloated you could see its outline on your belly if there was any light available. “If…if I could— _ngh_ , _fuck_ —d-do it all o-ver—over again, change it…”

But seismic waves erupt from your core, climb electric into your spine, and slump you against his chest. _Fucking…maker_. Your pussy clutches him tighter than vice. He sobs in your ear and bounces you on his cock, over and over again, chasing his pleasure while you grind your teeth and curl into him. Through the ringing in your ears, his encouraging mumbles on your skin, one word climbs to the surface and reverberates in your head: _Stay_. The Mandalorian gasping in your ear, thrusting desperately, and your plea lost in the middle of it all: _Stay, stay, stay._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: @mandoinevarro


	5. NO APPOINTMENT, NO MEETING

In the blue morning light, Nevarro is almost beautiful.

The deserted lava fields spread in flat terrain as far as the eye can see, bumps and dips where magma cooled creating waves like a black ocean. Among the tide, obsidian turtle shells shimmer like dark mirrors, where Din Djarin studies his face. It startled him when he crawled from the tent to take the pram inside; when he glanced at the ground and the ground glanced back. His face cloudy and warped by irregular volcanic rock, he barely recognized it. It’s not rare for his features to blur in his memory sometimes, especially when he’s out working for days at a time unable to catch a glimpse of himself. Vanity is not one of his many shortcomings—hiding your face for decades is a mighty vaccine against it.

But today something’s different. The reflection peering up at him belongs to a stranger. Relaxed eyebrows, a hooked nose (has the curved always been so pronounced?), lips that faintly curl up. Content brown eyes. His mirrored counterpart is a sentient being below him, plump with blood and oxygen. Alive.

He looks…normal. He looks happy.

However, morning weighs heavily on Din, he can see it in the bags below his eyes. It stings like a hangover, like the only hangover he ever had, back when he was an eighteen-year-old idiot and used the credits of his first bounty to get a flask of spotchka from some seedy bar. He remembers sitting in his crammed quarters at the old Covert, chugging the bottle on his own, methodically forcing himself to swallow against the burn. Waiting. Waiting for the alchemy to kick in, for the magic toxins that flushed drunks’ faces, lubricant that oiled their scowls into easy smiles. Waiting to feel what everyone else felt, just for a moment.

Lifting his head, Din peers ahead. Shadows of the city’s buildings creep above the horizon like a bad omen. The opposite of a promised land. Hunchbacked buildings stain the blue-gray sky, abruptly interrupt the intricate lava patterns, Nevarro the planet versus Nevarro the city. Din’s stomach crumples. One, maybe two hours by foot. One, maybe two hours, and last night will fade into a distant memory, a collection of ghost sensations.

But not yet. Right now, last night is still real. You are still real.

Crawling back into the tent, he licks his lips for the millionth time today. He can still taste you: that thick, salty-bitter taste, so much better than he could’ve imagined. He hopes it stays on his lips for a long time; or, at least, that he can replace it soon.

Inside, you’re curled up with his cape, a blooming bruise above your shoulder peeking out, the baby’s pram hovering next to you. He sits down, careful not to awake either of you, and runs a finger down your shoulder, feels the skin prickle. He buries his nose on the back of your hair and inhales: rain and earth as usual, but his soap too, a part of him that clings to you. Lips on the crook of your neck, Din smells himself on you, wonders if you’ll want to wash his scent away, or if you’ll want it to stay on you. You stir, your soft exhales gain a rasp. Din smiles. You do snore, after all.

He’ll have to wake you soon. He knows. He _knows_. You need to talk about last night. You need to have the frank conversation that you’ve both been postponing for way too long, back when you floated in dead space, no deadlines, no rush at all to make decisions. But things have changed, and he knows what he wants now, and he knows it can’t wait. Yet every time his fingers brush your shoulder to nudge you awake, he pulls them back. He’s never seen you so peaceful, not moving except for your expanding and contracting chest, the light fluttering of your lashes. All the fight in your body gone, those tall bridges around you down and inviting. So different from when he met you.

If there’s one thing Din’s good at, it’s sniffing out trouble. He had to be, if he wanted to make it in the Fighting Corps. In the Bounty Hunter’s Guild. He can sweep a room with a mental black light, spot the people who flare up white and bright, the ones he needs to stay away from—or approach, depending on the situation. And that day at the cantina, the first time he laid eyes on you? You glowed with it. Talking big game in Karga’s booth, laughing with your pretty smile and shuffling cards, you beamed with trouble, bright as radiation and just as dangerous. What needed to happen was clear as day. The Mandalorian needed to turn on his heels immediately, strut out of that bounty hunter hive without a second look, and never, ever, ask about you.

He’d been there before.

Mandalorians, despite common belief, are not made of beskar. Not on the inside, at least. They’re all warm blooded organics, burdened with flesh and internal organs and skeletons; pain and pleasure receptors. Older Mandalorians cautioned younger ones when they came of age and finished their training, when they were ready to become providers. Tall stern warriors, his superiors, warned that there would be temptation, situations that would make him doubt the Way. “Even the briefest taste,” Din’s former Alor said with that cavernous voice he had, “can be the point of no return.” And he was right.

Outside the Covert, there was so much…stimuli. Voices and colors and movement, a twenty-four-hour beehive, the galaxy buzzed and vibrated to no end. It was equally wonderous and grotesque, like a circus. The strenuous noises that rattled his ribcage, the strong smells, the different food, his senses had never felt more exhausted. The faces…stars, the _faces_. How muscles stretched in a big smile, the glint of teeth, the deep creases between eyebrows that signaled anger. Always moving, always changing, Din hadn’t seen so many uncovered heads since he was a child. His first few weeks outside he’d stare at people for hours until they scurried away or tried to fight him. Tried. 

Then, when the initial shock wore out, he noticed other details. The way children’s eyes filled with admiration when they’d look at their parents, how that dimpled girl in Alderaan would blush and stutter whenever he bought something from her stall. And Din would wonder, despite all warnings, what it’d feel like to be one of them. To share so much of himself with the outside world. With time, curiosity morphed into obsession, obsession into desperation, and soon enough he found himself with Rand and the others, running rampant in an already chaotic galaxy.

One war, two decades, and a thousand regrets later, the curiosity died down. The helmet helped him tune out the outside world, made it easier to retreat into his memories. The galaxy seemed duller by the day, emptier. Lonelier, though he didn’t dwell on it.

That is, until he met you.

Until his resolve circled the drain and he asked Karga who you were and where to find you, walked into your store without an idea of what he’d say. Behind the counter, eyes shining and that silky voice asking what you could do for him, you reset the galaxy for him. Every time he visited you felt like his first day outside all over again.

But last night—that was stronger, set in stone. It felt like commitment. Something was born last night, something burgeoned in his chest and took root. Din can feel the fullness in his body, like he grew an extra limb, similar to the swell that tangled in his insides when he went back for the kid. He doesn’t have a name for it yet, but it reminds him of the day he swore the Creed. The fresh sense of purpose, the carved-out path in front of him, knowing what needs to be done:

When the siege is over, he’ll take you with him.

“Are you watching me sleep?” you mumble, cotton mouthed. “Kinda creepy.”

Din chuckles, then remembers. Stars, his heart stops beating for a second. Dread and natural reflexes throw his palm whip fast over your closed eyes. Maker. What the hell was he thinking, sitting next to you without the helmet. Maker, one second too late and you could’ve opened your eyes and—

“Didn’t see anything. Promise,” you say with a smile and pull his cape over your face. “Cover up.”

He pats around for the helmet (where the hell did he drop it last night?), finds it abandoned by your feet. When he fits it around his head, the familiar padding hugging his skull, he swears it feels heavier than it did yesterday.

“You decent?”

“Yeah.”

You lower the pseudo blanket, sleepy eyes and easy smile. As if you purposefully want to make it harder for him to strike up a conversation. _But do I really need to—_ Yes. Yes, he does. He has to know where you stand and ask the big question: If you’d be willing to leave with him once the siege is lifted. Stars, his hands are sweating. But he can’t imagine you’d say no. Not after last night.

“Listen…”

As if on cue, whimpers and sniffles float from the closed pram. G _reat timing, kid_. The baby’s ears droop like wilting leaves when Din places him on the ground, and the little bundle waddles with his eyes cast down until he reaches your ankle.

“What is it, kiddo?” you ask softly, your voice gentler than Din’s ever heard, sitting up as you hug his cloak tighter around your shoulders.

“I think…” Din begins, watching the baby sniffle and hug your bandaged calf. “I think he’s apologizing.”

A pair of eight-ball eyes blink at you, shiny with unshed tears, and Din feels an ache deep in his chest. This sweet little kid, all he’s been put through…

“Oh, don’t worry,” you coo, as one of your hands wriggles out the cloak and cradles the baby’s cheek. Your thumb brushes away a fat tear. “I’m tougher than your dad.” You wink at Din: _Just kidding._ But it’s true. Living in this planet for so long, all on your own. “Tough” is a survival skill for you, not a choice.

Also… _dad_. He should probably correct you. Din is not the kid’s real father, even though he’s caught himself thinking about the baby as his son once or twice, when he’s not too aware of his inner monologue. But he can’t bring himself to tell you the truth. _Actually, he belongs to a race of wizards that I’ve been quested to deliver him to. Can’t adopt him if I’ll eventually give him up._ Not when the kid’s shedding quiet tears into your leg and you’re doing your best to soothe him. Nevarro’s not child friendly, and Din can’t imagine you’ve got much practice with baby stuff, but he can tell you’re doing your best. And that’s enough to spread warmth through his chest.

What a troop you must make: Mandalorian bounty hunter, black market dealer, magic green baby. You could set up a three-person circus and retire. Yet the image tugs at a memory tucked away in his mind, something familiar but blurred.

His rumination’s cut short when Din notices the kid’s pudgy hands extending strategically on either side of your right leg, his eyelids beginning to flicker. _Shit, shit, shit._

“She forgives you,” he tells the kid hastily as he scoops him and lays him on the open pram. He doesn’t need to be the little womprat’s real father to tell he was about to whip out his favorite party trick: healing witch powers. So far it doesn’t look like it permanently harms him, but it does weaken him, and Din can’t take chances. Plus, he skipped the part about the baby having supernatural powers when he told you his story, and there’s not a hell of a lot of ways one can explain fresh wounds disappearing.

“So,” you say after the baby’s settled in his pod. “What are we going to do,” you start, and Din’s throat knots with dread and excitement, “about the jammer.”

Oh. Stars, straight to business

“You said you have one.”

“I said I _might_ have one,” you answer, grabbing for your discarded skirts. You fumble with them under the cloak, one hand clasped tight around it. It’s funny—after everything you’ve shared, you won’t undress in front of him during the day. “I mean, jammers aren’t picky like motors, they’re more one-size-fits-all.”

“But we still have to rewire it,” Din completes, wiping dry drool from the kid’s cheek with his thumb.

“Right.” Holding the cloak with your chin while you clasp your tunic, you seem to slowly draw your way out of a maze. That restless abacus in your head adding and subtracting. Your brows relax, and Din knows you’ve figured it out. “But I’ve got my equipment in my workshop, and we’d save time not having to remove it from a ship. And, no offense, but the Crest’s jammer was an antique. Way more complicated than newer models.” You finish dressing and hand him the cloak. “Only problem is the potential trooper stakeout outside the store.”

“I’ll take care of troopers.” Din takes the cloak and hesitates. It’s day nine, that time bomb still ticks in his head. Could it be that easy? Could you really do all this in one day? “What if we don’t finish on time?”

“Then,” you say, “we’ll figure something out.”

 _We_ , Din thinks, and smiles. Somehow, that’s all the reassurance he needs.

≈

Nevarro couldn’t look more deserted if tumbleweed rolled in the streets. The city’s a populated ghost town, no man’s land that’s filled with men. Well, men is a strong word. How did Viszla put it that time? _We live hidden like sand rats._ Yes, rats seems more fitting. Packs of them, scurrying around the former Covert, stealing Mandalorian armor to be bartered for scraps. Karga didn’t have to spell it out when he told him about people finding the Covert. Mando is familiar with the ways of the Outer Rim: Anything unclaimed is up for the taking, and beskar’s too tempting to resist. Knowing doesn’t make his blood boil any less, though. If Din focuses, he can almost hear their squeaking echoing from the sewers, the scavengers of this gray rock serving themselves to the abandoned armor of his people.

Movement to the left. The Mandalorian draws his blaster and bars you with his forearm, to see…a tunic. A short tunic. Tiny red lights. A Jawa. He exhales and sheathes the blaster. Stars. With the vembrance turned off, he has to rely on bare eyesight to scan for danger.

The Jawa drags a sleigh behind him. On it lies a dead or unconscious trooper (it makes no difference to these creatures), its gloved fingers drawing traffic lines on the mud and ash of unpaved streets. Red stars below the cowl focus on you for half a second, the bounty hunter’s hand approaches his blaster, and…

…and the Jawa waves at you, says “hello” in its squeaky language. You wave back, smiling, and the lump of shadow continues on its way. A neighborly gesture that in this context is plain bizarre.

“Old friend of yours?” Mando asks, walking again.

“Associate,” you correct, running a finger along the kid’s left ear until it twitches and he giggles. “Jawas scavenge parts straight from the wreckage, eliminate the middle man. And they don’t report to the New Republic.”

 _You mean steal from the wreckage,_ Din almost says, but bites it back. He supposes he can’t judge you for trading with Jawas. Prospects on the Outer Rim are bleaker than ever, and everyone’s got to eat. Especially during a siege.

Maker, sometimes he can’t believe he convinced himself to leave you here. Marooned in the type of place Core World citizens only talk about with shaking heads and disapproving voices. The type of place that makes people feel better about their lives, because _hey, it could be worse, at least I don’t live in Nevarro._ Granted, Din didn’t know then there’d be a siege. After the fight, after he bid goodbye to Cara and Karga, he hovered on the atmosphere for longer than was safe, gazing down at your store’s roof from the Razor Crest’s cockpit. His head a seesaw, weighing his options and unable to make a decision. You were still so close. He could fly back down to the surface, knock on your door, and take you away with him like he did with the kid.

Would you say yes? Reject him?

But most importantly: what about his quest? What kind of life would you lead travelling with him, a fugitive of the Empire and the New Republic? Life for Din has been defined by survival. Every day he’s had to get up and fight; fight to an inch of his life, fight with concussions, frostbite, shattered ribs. Knife wounds, blaster wounds. Personal wounds. He didn’t want that for you. You’re young, clever, resourceful. After that day, maybe you’d decide Nevarro was too dangerous. Maybe you’d pay your passage on a cruiser and start over in the Core Worlds, make your luck own there. Find a good man, if that’s what you wanted.

So he started the thrusters—the same ones he bought from you so long ago—and jumped into hyperspace with a semi clear conscience. This was best for everyone. You probably wouldn’t have accepted his offer, anyway. For five months he lived with his decision. And then he learnt about the siege.

In the sky, a string of river pearls forms a pattern like a necklace. Imperial cruisers, tie fighters, every ship that Guideon commands, solemnly presiding over Nevarro, itching to shoot down runaways. They’re too far up in the atmosphere to make out anyone in the surface, but Mando grabs your arm and coaxes you behind him all the same, his grip on the pram tighter. The memory of that imp’s blaster on your forehead is still too fresh. The dried blood on your legs.

Din glances back at you briefly. You catch his eye and smile—not grin, not smirk—but smile, a pretty, kind smile that would put to shame any of the imaginary Naboo girls you were so worked up about two nights ago. He should know, he’s been to Naboo, and none of the women there had your kaleidoscopic face, those hints of life that send his pulse on a sprint. The Mandalorian wonders what else you could be hiding under that sharp tongue, behind those clever eyes.

“Mando,” you call and point at a blackened mass to your right. “Nursery’s this way.”

All buildings in Nevarro emerge from volcanic rock, pushing away from clumps of hardened magma. They’re half-manmade, half-volcano hybrids—it’s a useful layout that gives their structure grip against constant earthquakes. It also, however, makes the buildings look like tumors growing on the navel of an ill planet. Your store’s the only one that’s never looked malignant, more like a sprouting flower than a parasite.

And now, the cantina too. Burned to a crisp, blacker than night, the former Church of Nevarro seems to have been swallowed by its unwilling host: the volcanic rock it was built upon. It’d be near impossible to know there’s a cantina inside, if not for the wide window peering inside. And it’s far from impossible for you or Mando, who know by heart where all the doors stand. He pushes one open for you, and together you walk inside.

“Thumb on the bottom, middle and ring fingers on the top, index to the side,” instructs Cara from behind the cantina’s crisp black counter. “The other side.”

Greef Karga sits on a stool opposite her, fumbling with a deck of cards. “Got it. Then what?”

“Then…” The veteran moves aside a flask of ardees and places a matching deck on the bar. “Pressure with your index, release the thumb.” She acts out her instructions and creates an arched ribbon spread on the surface. The Mandalorian can’t remember the last time he walked into the cantina and didn’t see the hypnotic patterns on cards, didn’t hear the wing-flapping noise of their shuffle. Although if he thinks about it, it makes sense that sabacc is the local sport around here. Dumb luck is the only god in the Outer Rim, where inhabitants gaze perpetually at their uncertain future and never look back. Tomorrow they’ll get a better hand, yesterday’s lost credits are forgotten. Everyone here seems to shed their past like snake skin. 

“Nice spread, Dune,” you call. Greef and Cara follow your voice, realize they have visitors. “You should job hunt at Canto Bight.”

“Oh yeah?” replies the ex-shock trooper with an impish grin, both elbows on the counter and a rag over her shoulder, all bartender swagger. “What do _you_ know about Canto Bight, hot stuff? Heard you’ve never been off this rock.” She spies a sly glance at Mando, enough to confirm that she’s annoying him on purpose, openly flirting with you. He squares his stance, rolls the helmet to pin her down with the visor, but (he really should know this by now) it does little to intimidate her.

“No trash talk before nightfall, ladies,” quips Karga, walking towards the pram. “And certainly not in front of babies. Hello, little one!” Said little one coos and lifts his skinny arms to be lifted by the Guild Leader, who sits back down delighted at having the baby’s favor, the little rascal on his lap. “He likes me!” Greef Karga smiles wide, flashing those white glinting teeth that’ve always reminded Din of a wolf’s. He’s not happy to leave the kid here, but he can’t take him if there’s a stakeout in your store. Beggars can’t be choosers and so on. But Cara’s here, and Din knows he can trust her with the baby. Though not with you, evidently.

“Tell you what, Mando,” Cara continues, apparently not done peacocking around you. “We arm wrestle, just like last time. Winner gets a flask of spotchka and the opportunity to take the lady to Canto Bight after you lift the siege.”

“Help us lift the siege and I’ll consider winning that flask.”

Dune lets out an long whistle, giving you a complicit look. “Big words.”

Your eyes rake along the Mandalorian’s armor slowly, boots to helmet, a dark tint in your eyes. Din flushes, the oppressive heat of his clothes suddenly thicker.

You shrug and answer, “Big man.” Your fingertips dance idly around the nape of your neck, which makes Mando think about last night, about his tongue on your neck and the purple bruises he sucked, the salty taste of flesh, the heady one between your legs. The memory steers blood into…into awkward places. Which, knowing you, was your intention. Maker, he needs to talk to you about teasing him in public.

“Help you how?” asks Greef, lifting the baby into the counter, whose six little claws hold on to two of his gloved fingers.

“Look after the kid, we won’t be more than a few hours.”

“Sure thing!” booms Karga, at the same time as Cara says, “Fuck no.”

You fold your arms at the veteran. “You scared of an infant, Dune? It’s only one of him, and…” you squint at the cantina’s black shell, like something’s out of place in its burned remains, “…two of you. Where’s—” you start, before glancing at Mando and swallowing the second half.

“Duma?” supplies Karga, tapping the corners of the deck on the counter. “Don’t know, probably boiling beskar to make broth. Rumor has it she’s running out of supplies, fast. Did you ever take her up on that deal?”

Your eyes shoot vibroblades at him, your mouth a flat line.

“What deal?” Mando asks.

“Nothing,” you reply, still glaring warnings at Karga, who sighs, shakes his head, and tickles the baby’s tummy. The kid giggles and kicks half the deck off the counter. “Nothing important. We should get going.”

Outside, you guide the Mandalorian through a maze of back alleys, the ugly underbelly of a planet that’s already the galaxy’s own underbelly. Mando glues a palm to his blaster’s grip, lifting it only as muscle memory to turn on the vembrance and activate the setting to scan footprints, frustrated when he remembers his own piece of equipment would immediately snitch on him. Yet you glade past dark corners that beg for their own knife-brandishing mugger with the grace of someone frolicking in D’Qar’s moorlands, postcard-calm. 

Once in your store’s backdoor, the Mandalorian ventures a glance at the front street. Empty. Like the rest of the city, it’s like curfew was declared, not an imp in sight. Certainly not a stakeout in process. Behind him, you push the door open, the busted security panel no more than a prop to discourage robbers.

“What?” you ask when he doesn’t walk inside.

“There’s nobody here,” he answers, studying the connecting alleys like a web of arteries, waiting for a trooper squadron to materialize and ambush you.

“It’s quiet too quiet?” you tease with a lopsided grin. “Lay off the thrillers, Mando. Come on.”

You step inside, he hesitates. “Could be a trap.”

Hands on the doorframe, leaning forward, your face almost touches the helmet. “Then you’ll shoot them and we’ll be back to square one. Not much of a choice here, Mando.” Those pretty eyes, your shining, wet lips. It’s a siren’s call he knows he shouldn’t answer.

The Mandalorian follows you inside.

It takes him a moment to recognize his surroundings.

Your store hibernates in the dark, stale air floating around its vault. Your store, which used to buzz with drills and neon lights and life around the clock, looms like a beast’s hollow belly, crypt-still. Lights off and furniture wrapped in sheets, it looks abandoned, the way all those family houses in deserted villages were hastily vacated during the war. He wonders how long you’ve been out of business because of the siege. Because of him.

You walk across the reception in tomb silence. In the reception signs hang next to the front desk—store policies that gave Mando more than one headache—dark and colorless, like they turned in their badges and no longer preside over this place. Only “NO IMPS” twitches, one or two agonizing flashes of neon green, before it shuts down like its colleagues. Six rules in total, although in Din’s opinion there’s a seventh that foregoes the need of a sign: “NO QUESTIONS”.

That’s a rule that everyone in Nevarro—bounty hunter or not—subscribes to. It’s the rule you followed when the Mandalorian walked into your store, still crafting some half-assed excuse about thrusters when he came face to face (helmet to face?) with you. You never asked about New Republic guidelines or what he wanted them for. Not even for his name. No questions when he came back two weeks later. No questions as weeks passed and then months, as tension thickened between you until his internal barometer cracked.

No questions when his thinning resolve broke one night. That night. He pushed you onto your workbench, you undid each other’s belts, pawed at each other’s sides. No questions when he slid into your wet heat, when he had to stop for a second to avoid a heart attack. No questions when he finished inside you, blood roaring in his ears, your sighs clouding his visor, your hand gently pushing him back.

And then, his question: “Where are you going?”

“Upstairs,” you answered, pulling your trousers back around your hips.

It dropped on his head like freezing water. Upstairs. Upstairs to your apartment, to rest. Alone. Meaning your encounter was a one-night stand, a shortcut to let off some steam. Stars, you were basically swinging the front door wide open for him, putting away a couple of wrenches and switching off the lights to signal the night was over. The Mandalorian didn’t need questions to know he’d overstayed his visit.

But…what if he’d spent the night anyway? Maybe the next morning he would’ve been upfront with you, confess he’d wanted you for so long and that he wanted it to evolve past one furtive encounter, that he wanted it to be real. No, he probably wouldn’t have. As a bounty hunter—as Mandalorian—there are things he simply can’t have. Things that are better off unspoken, better off—

“Tucked away,” you say behind him, making the Mandalorian jump.

“What?”

“The planner.” You walk behind the front desk. “I was saying I don’t remember leaving it here. I thought it was tucked away in some box.” 

Oh.

It _is_ strange. A light sheen of dust covers the counter, yet the planner is glossy clean, a painted depiction of the Manarai Mountains on its cover. A souvenir from Coruscant. He wonders who brought you that. It tugs at something sweet but sad in his chest, the fact that you have to rely on others’ cheap souvenirs to explore the galaxy. That’ll change as soon as this mess with the siege is settled.

You flip through the planner, empty for the most part but for a few scribbles on the first pages. It’s dated 5 ABY, four years ago. The Mandalorian knows from experience that your appointment rule works mostly to turn away unsavory clients. Or to get on his nerves.

“Look at that,” you murmur as if reading his mind, your finger pointing at nothing on a page. “You don’t have an appointment, Mando.”

“We don’t have time for this,” he answers, though he knows he’ll make time for it anyway. It used to drive him up the wall whenever you refused to see him using that stupid excuse. But, as with everything with you, it was more complicated than that. It took longer than he’s willing to admit to understand that it was a game. That you liked him riled up, after the push and pull, the hot and cold, the challenge. You had a taste for difficulty. Although it didn’t take as long to figure out that he liked it too. “Just let me in.”

“I don’t know,” you drawl, glancing at the dull signs on the wall. “Rules are rules.”

The Mandalorian has played this game with you enough to know what you want. He thinks of all those memories in this building. You, pinned between his armor and the doorframe; him, sitting on that battered couch upstairs with your hands on his knees. Even those calm nights, when you’d only sit and talk and make him laugh, and sometimes he’d get a laugh from you too, if he didn’t try too hard. All the sweating and the panting and the talking that these walls have witnessed. Maybe there’s time for one last memory before you both leave this planet for good. Not maybe—there’s definitely time. If this were an ambush, you’d be dodging blaster shots by now.

“So bend the rules,” he says slowly, gripping his edge of the counter and dropping his voice to the low register that gives you goosebumps. “For me.”

Your eyes twinkle like copper at the fact that he’s playing along. “And what do I get in return?”

This time, he doesn’t hesitate. “Whatever you want.” Perhaps he’s known for a while, in the back of his head where he could ignore it, but last night the idea rushed to his front lobe. He’ll give you anything you want.

“I want…” you begin, mischief shining in your eyes, before a shadow clouds them. Slowly, your face goes soft, a special kind of longing in your pupils. You swallow, your voice becomes throaty, and the words sound truer than anything Din’s ever heard: “I want you. I just want you.” 

He almost trips on his feet when he rounds the counter, his head already swimming. The hunter crowds you with his body, backs you up against the counter until you’re caged and looking up at him, hooded eyes and parted lips. _Hot stuff_. Cara’s shallow pet name. When he heard it he thought it was inappropriate. But now. As your mouth nestles on his clothed neck and breathes hot, damp air through the fabric—a mild sensation for most people, he guesses, but almost a mating call for him—he realizes it’s not untrue. The name fits you like a glove, _hot stuff_. It’s just…incomplete. If he’s learnt anything these nine days is that there’s so much more to you, enough sailor knots of emotion and personality inside you to loop around the galaxy if unraveled.

“Touch me,” you breathe, rubbing up against him, searching friction. “Please, please, touch me. There’s nobody here, we—we have time.”

Gloved palms on your waist, down to your hips, lower to your ass, Din tries to fondle you as best he can. He pins you between the counter and his hips, your leg curls around his back and holds him closer. His erection starts to bulge against your belly, your breaths start quickening, your hearts start pumping faster. The tell-tale signs that indicate you’re both ready to go hit all their usual beats. But something’s missing. There’s a step you’re skipping, something…something he’s not doing right.

Tentatively, you press a small kiss on his covered neck, and he can only feel its frustrating whisper, a promise of more.

A lightbulb flicks on.

Mando holds your hips and spins you around, the desk’s edge on your waist. “Bend over,” he grouses next to your ear, his voice sand-coarse. “Don’t turn around.”

Gloves off first. One palm cradles the back of your neck, feels you shiver. His left hand runs down your back and around to your tummy, savoring all those warm, secret places on you, the way your body opens up to him on instinct. The power trip when he cups your heat through your skirts and you moan into the counter. You nestle your hips on his lap, and he stiffens on command, a tug between his legs that he knows is far too insistent for foreplay. Stars, it’s like he’s conditioned to get hard in this store.

“Don’t—” he chokes out “—not so fast. Or I—I won’t—”

“What?” you pant. Din hears the grin laced in your voice and knows it’s bad news for him. He drops to his knees and both hands walk up your bandaged calves, squeeze the tops of your thighs. “You…you don’t…” He throws your skirts over your back. You inhale sharply at the cold air—or at his hands pulling the soft flesh of your backside. When he removes the helmet, your pitch sounds broken up, more desperate. “You d-don’t want…”

It’s a small victory when he parts his lips against your clothed core and it’s you, for once, who chokes on words. Small victory, but he’ll take it, especially after the way his cock twitches in his pants when he smells you. He kisses you again, just a peck over your clit, and your legs shake. Fucking…stars. If this is how you feel when you tease him…well, he gets it. You mewl and push back on his face, but he hardly thinks you want it that easy.

“Stop moving,” he tells you sternly, with a voice he’d use on quarries.

A shiver runs down your spine. “But—” You break into a whine when his open palm slaps the side of your thigh. It’s probably the surprise rather than the sting that makes you inhale sharply, and a combination of both that dampens the cotton between your legs.

“Stop moving,” he repeats, mouth pressed against your core so you can feel the vibration; that, he learnt from you. “Or you don’t get my mouth.”

Above him, you let out a displeased little grunt, too throaty to mean much. But you open your legs wider and brace yourself on the front desk, grant him full access to you. His index hooks on your underwear, moves it aside, and he buries his lips deep into the softest part of you. Din barely hears you gasp. He circles both arms around your thighs and pulls you closer, until his tongue is buried between your folds and you just have to take it. _Fuck_ , it’s just…decadent. The taste, the smell, how soaked you are already, your little purrs and whimpers when he sucks on your lips. They’re not things he ever thought he’d get to feel. He doesn’t deserve any of it.

“ _Mmm_ , stars, Mando,” you sob, sneakily rutting your hips like you just can’t help it. He allows it, but only because he’s so rock fucking hard he’s practically doing the same thing. His cock trapped down one pant leg, he squeezes his thighs to try and soothe the ache. “Move—move up a b-bit.”

“No,” he grunts, and licks a slow line from the spot right below your clit to the back of your slit. It wasn’t so long ago that it was your mouth on him, you teasing him mercilessly inside this very store, him moaning and grunting and losing his mind. That’s how he wants you: sloppy, desperate, begging. 

“Maker, don’t t-tease,” you moan, but it only encourages him. His tongue slides deep inside you where you’re hotter than sin, enjoying how your walls swell and tighten around it. You’re so fucking _wet_ , he could push into you right now and relieve the pressure building between his legs. But not yet.

“Beg me,” Din groans, mouthing at the inside of your thighs and sucking tiny bruises there. You moan above him, deep in your throat, and he wonders which one of you is more turned on right now. “Put— _fuck_ —put that smart mouth to use. Beg me.”

For a moment all he can hear is your labored breathing, the wheels turning in your pretty head, laying out a plan to make him give in faster. Then, soft and sweet, you hum, “ _Mando_.”

One word. Probably the word Din hears the most, so generic and impersonal that everyone from friends to strangers to enemies call him that. That word coming from your lips makes his heart sprint, his cock pulse and scream at him to hurry up. Stars, but if it was his name—his real name—on your lips, soft and purring like you pronounced his nickname, he knows he wouldn’t be able to hold back a second longer.

“You always make me feel so good,” you continue, arching your back a little to test the waters. “You’re so—so good with your mouth, _stars_. Want you to kiss me again—kiss me everywhere. Taste me like yesterday—” Your breath catches when he sucks on your inner lips again, closer to where you want him. Maker, if you keep talking like that… “Used to th-think about it all the time, how— _mmm_ —how your—your tongue would feel. Never, _ngh_ , never thought you’d use it th-there, though.” Din laps at your cunt, drinks from it. Fuck, he can’t remember the last time he got this hard. An airy laugh before you continue. “You can be _so_ d-dirty sometimes. I’d let you do—do _anything_ to me.”

Really, Din doesn’t know what pushes him to do it. He doesn’t know what makes him pull back and spread you open with his fingers, stare at your glistening, deliciously swollen folds, and spit at their very top. You moan raggedly above him, a complete mess of sobs and whimpers, as Din simply stares. He watches the trail of spit run down your slit, the lower it goes the more precum he feels sticking to his trousers. Half-drunk on your words and your slick, Din thinks: _What did you do to me?_ Maker, you have him wrapped around your finger.

Saliva trails down until it teardrops on your clit, clings to it, and he doesn’t need another sign. His lips latch on to your bundle of nerves and _suck._ You sob and whine and cry, rocking your hips hard against his mouth, and he continues sucking through his teeth. Your knees give out, but he holds them before you can hit the ground, holds you in place as he feels you give him everything, your pussy clenching around nothing. Slick trails down his chin, all the way to his neck, and— _shit_. He’s going to burst in his pants just from feeling you cum in his mouth.

It takes every last ounce of self-control he has left to detach his lips from your cunt and stumble to his feet. You’re still shaking, still panting, but he can’t hold it back a minute longer. Fuck, not even a second longer, he needs to have you right now.

It’s a struggle to get a hold of his fly, fingers trembling and teeth grinding. When he finally pulls the zipper down, the sound snaps your head up.

“Are you—Mando, are you going to—”

“Yes,” he grunts, digging into his waistband for his cock, lining it up against your cunt. Stars, he’s so pent up, it hurts to touch it. “Is it—is it o-okay, can—can, I—”

“Oh, fuck, _yes_ ,” you mewl, pushing your hips so tightly against his groin the head of his cock catches against your entrance. _Fuck_. “Please, please, please, put it inside, let me feel your big, thick, co—”

One hard shove, deep enough that he feels himself poke your cervix, and he’s cumming—hard. His spine doubles over and he grunts and moans into your hair, giving you short, stunted thrusts as he fills you to the brim. You were already so swollen before, now you feel unbearably tight, squeezing his cock so harshly his eyes roll back on his skull. And his balls keep pulling up and giving you more of his load, his teeth grinding so hard they might crack. One last thrust, nice and deep so his cum stays inside you, and his palm presses down on your eyes. Din uses that hand as leverage to turn you around and tilt your head like you showed him, just enough so he can reach your lips. And he kisses you.

Your bodies spasm and throb against each other, you clench around him involuntarily and he flinches, too sensitive to handle the aftershocks of your orgasm. Still, he could stay like this for days. Gently sucking on your tongue, running his along the roof of your mouth, feeling how your lips curve against his in a smile. Then, an alarming thought. Maybe this is the only way to do it that feels right now—sex, he means. With the helmet off, his lips on yours, his nose on your hair. Bare hands drawing circles on your hips. Every sense devoted to you. _Even the briefest taste can be a point of no return._

You peck his lips and flutter sweet, short kisses around his jaw, working your way up to his ear, where you whisper, “We’re running out of time.”

 _The jammer_. Those words are quickly becoming the bane of his existence. “I know,” he whispers back, but presses one last, long kiss to your lips that feels inexplicably sad, like a kiss goodbye. Din shakes the thought off his head. He’s too pessimistic sometimes.

You both hiss when he pulls out, slowly so he won’t hurt you.

“Keep ‘em closed,” he tells you before removing his hand from your eyes. For all he knows you could open them right there, and there’d be nothing he could do about it. Somehow, however, he’s certain you won’t. His trust is rewarded when he pulls the hand back, and your eyes are screwed shut beneath it.

It takes an awkward choreography to straighten yourselves. You try to pull your own underwear back on, but in your position it’s near impossible. So Din kneels behind you once more, fishes his helmet from the floor, tucks himself back into his trousers, and lifts your panties until they hug your hips. You push your own skirts down before Din’s upright, which results in the long fabric covering him like your furniture. You share a quick laugh before standing straight and facing each other.

“You can open them.”

 _Now_ , he tells himself, watching your sated smile and blinking eyes. The words are on the tip of his tongue: _When this is over, would you like to come with me—_

“If there’s a jammer here,” you say, before he can get a word out, “it’s in the workshop.”

You walk around him and open a door behind the reception desk to reveal the staircase that leads to your apartment. Din’s still telling himself that he’ll just ask you later, when you climb one step—and stop. You turn around like you can sense he’s about to ask, for the second time in this store, where you’re going.

“Gotta get some stuff from upstairs, but I’ll be down in a second.” Your voice wobbles, your foot hesitates on the step. You’re nervous. “But if you find the jammer before I come back, don’t…don’t leave.”

“Of course not.” Maker, of course he wouldn’t leave without you. Do you really think he would?

The workshop is darker than the reception. A single window, currently boarded up, so he has to use the helmet’s light. The cone of white light creates a sinister effect, like creatures lurk everywhere it doesn’t touch. Rubber tubes hang from the ceiling like lianas, circuit boards glimmer green like leaves, and yellow sensors blink from several components. Your own little ecosystem watches him dig into boxes of clutter to search for a jammer. Stars, he’s never known how you manage to find anything here. It’s probably best if he waits outside; he wouldn’t be able to find his own ship in here without you.

He’s turning to the door when the helmet’s light catches on a dark glint, like it reflected on a mirror. It stops him on his tracks. Din’s not sure what prompts his feet to carry him toward your worktable, where the mystery item lays center-front. He sees himself reflected on the dark T-visor. It’s a helmet. It’s a blue Mandalorian helmet.

At first he’s confused. Surprised to see a Mandalorian helmet here—and is it even a Madalorian helmet? Yes, yes it is. His brain lags behind his eyes, goes through different scenarios, each less likely than the last.

 _Is there another Mandalorian here? Did the Alor bring this? Is the Alor a client?_

And then, truth.

It falls abruptly on his back like atmospheric pressure, gravity that crushes. A hot rush of blood enveloping his head, poisoning his thoughts, a ringing in his ears so sharp he thinks he might pass out. A million thoughts in less than a second—convoluted, scrambled, furious. Then an image, so clear that the Maker himself might’ve played it for him like a holo: Thieves, scammers, criminals scurrying through the tunnels of the Covert, the empty halls where his people built a refuge, where they could feel safe. The pile of beskar armor unguarded—the high price that brave Mandalorians paid to help Din, help the child—served in a silver platter for these scavengers, these fucking honorless lowlifes.

His gloved fingers grip your worktable so hard his knuckles might crack—or the table. But the Mandalorian can’t feel the pain on his joints, not when his bloodstream’s turned to acid, when it feels like somebody jammed live wires into his head.

This fucking place. This planet with its fucking people, their fucking cynicism, this fucking landfill for hazardous waste, this piece of shit skughole—

Above, the Mandalorian hears footsteps. Your footsteps. You.

He looks down at the helmet, the empty T-visor limp and black, dead. You did this. Thinking of you clears the red cloud from his mind, trades it for a gray one. A headache creeps behind his eyes, his shoulders go slack. He feels hollowed out. Like a spoon reached inside his chest and scooped away everything essential, left him a carcass. Like something died here today.

You did this.

And then the helmet is not a helmet, but a severed head. A head with a pool of blood around it, guts sprayed all over, and there’s the corrupt smell of blaster residue coming from his neighbor’s house, the taste of copper after biting his tongue running, the durasteel giants shooting red death, the deafening explosions, his parents’ screams, his school going up in a cloud of smoke, his father holding him, whispering one last sentence that he can’t hear through the sounds of war and carnage, his mother’s cheeks stained with tears and dirt and blood, their blurring faces, the darkness, the fear.

Holding the helmet, Din feels tears sting in the corners of his eyes, then hot on his cheeks. Nobody understands, why can’t anybody understand? The warrior that owned this helmet is lost forever, condemned to live like a phantom, empty without the Creed, without the Way. It’s worse than death. It’s the curse that most of the Covert was forced to carry, to walk this galaxy like living dead, violently stripped of everything that mattered. And the relic of their sacrifice sits in your workshop next to the rest of your junk, ready to be sold off to the highest bidder, somebody who’ll want to hang it in their wall like game they hunted, and _how could you do this to him, how could you, how could you do this—_

“Find anything yet?”

When the Mandalorian turns, his helmet’s white light locks you in place like quarry. Like guilty quarry.

You squint and raise a palm to shut out the bright beam. “Stars, Mando,” you laugh. “Are you trying to blind me? Turn that off.”

Your words are muffled by the rushing blood that wraps around his ears, loud as a waterfall, but he can understand them. The Mandalorian grips the helmet tighter between his hands and keeps the light on so you can see what he found, what he knows about you. The ugly, festered truth about you.

Once your eyes adjust to the bright light and they’re able to stay open for more than three seconds, you give him a quizzical look. The visor gives you nothing, so you drop your gaze to the hard evidence between his hands.

And you have the _nerve_ to look even more surprised. Furrowed eyebrows and everything to add to the performance.

“Where did you get that?” you ask.

A thousand responses climb into his head in a savage, foul clutter, like army ants. _I should ask you the same, where do you think?, how much are they giving you?, was it worth it?, what’s wrong with you?, what’s wrong with this fucking planet?_ He opens his mouth, but they swarm in his throat all at once and tie a knot around his windpipe. More tears on his cheeks, another attempt at words—nothing.

Finally, quietly: “How could you do this to me?”

The crease between your brows digs deeper, and there’s genuine worry in your eyes. Of course you’re worried, he just caught you red fucking handed. “Mando, I really don’t understand—”

“Me neither,” he hisses through his teeth, “because this is a Mandalorian helmet, and you’re no Mandalorian.” The first insect out, the rest follow like a waterfall, crawling out his mouth. “How long did you wait after I left to steal this from the Covert? An hour? Five minutes?”

Trapped under the light, where you can no longer hide in shadows, you look stricken. The harsh light shines on circles under your eyes, creases where you frown. Bleak features he never noticed before.

Your voice is low and icy when you say, “I never stole anything from the Covert.”

“Scavenge, loot, I don’t care what you people like to call it.” _How could you, after everything, how could you._

“Listen to me,” you say steadily, but your eyes are hot coals and your jaw is set, your own anger rising. Good. Masks off. He wants to see who’s been hiding under his noses these nine days. All those fucking months. “I didn’t take a thing from the Covert. I have no idea where that helmet came from.”

The Mandalorian is barely listening. He’s heard more than enough lies for two lifetimes, he sure as fuck doesn’t need yours. Instead, he focuses on the one thought that manages to float in the red sea of anger and despair. He holds on to it like an anchor, clutches it until his palms bleed, but truth hurts.

“Duma.” He doesn’t ask this time around—he tells you. He knows and there’s nothing you can do about it—nothing _he_ can do about it. Greef Karga’s words shine painful light on fog. _Boiling beskar…did you take her up on that deal?_ “You’re selling it to her.”

“Stars, _of course not_.” The stoniness of your features melts for an instant, hurt revealed underneath those layers. You look devastated, tired. Maker, you’re _good_. Those hours of sabacc are sure paying off. “Why won’t you believe me?”

“How can I believe you?” he snarls, his head suffocating in dark quicksand—grief, anger, betrayal all clogging his nostrils, making his head throb. _How could you how could you how could you_. “When I know what type of people sprout from this planet, I make a living hunting them. I know _you_ —” his voice breaks, but the words keep flowing and he hardly hears them “—I know the kind of company you keep, I know you have no principles, I know you can’t commit to shit—”

“ _Commit_?” you snap, face hardening cold and twisted like the magma outside, but he knows too well what lies beneath the surface. Lava, hot and bubbling, your anger as raw as his. Rawer. “You wanna talk about commitment? I waited for you for five months!” The light from the helmet no longer makes you squint, but it turns your eyes red and watery. “ _You left_. You left me here to starve through a fucking siege that _you_ caused—”

“I came back for you!”

That gives you pause. Then you shake your head. “No, you came back because that piece of shit official asked—”

“He asked to meet me in Belderone.” Belderone, same sector as Nevarro, not even ten minutes away in hyperspace. “Told me Nevarro wasn’t safe because there was a siege, so I insisted we meet here.” The memory drains him. How worried he was about you, the type of worried that stirs bile in the stomach. How guilty he felt. “To see you again. Make sure you were okay.” The Mandalorian looks down at the helmet in his hands, a strange mirror staring up at him. Harsher than the one from this morning. His ears ring, his mouth tastes sour, his rising headache plateaus into an unbearable, incessant throb. A ghost limb aches somewhere in his body, all over it. He wants to leave your store, your planet.

 _How could you_?

Mando doesn’t raise his head to look at you when he walks out the workshop. You don’t stop him when he reaches the main door. You don’t stop him when he walks out to the street. 

The sky is jaundice-yellow when he steps outside. Gone are this morning’s blue hues, suffocated by the sickly coughing of a million volcanos, by their fumaroles and their sparks. For all the Mandalorian cares, this planet can burn.

On his way to the cantina to pick up the kid, he stares at the marker that identifies the entrance to the city: that crooked, arthritis-ridden arch. Beyond it, he spots the outline of a ship. A sleek civilian shuttle, probably a rental. The official isn’t stupid enough to fly a Republic starship past siege lines, so if the tiny shuttle fooled Guideon’s platoon in the atmosphere, well, it’ll have to do it again. Tomorrow, they’ll just have to tempt fate and avoid tempting the batallion of Imperial cruisers. Or fly out in the Crest and hope they can jump into hyperspace before imps pulverize them. All he wants is to put as many lightyears between him and this planet.

Din’s head pounds when he walks inside the cantina. The only thought hammering against his skull: _How could you._

__

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @mandoinevarro


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